Army asks industry for human-machine interfaces that join soldiers to mixed reality and autonomous robots

NATICK, Mass. – U.S. Army researchers are asking for industry's help in developing new ways for soldiers to communication and interact with mixed-reality and autonomous robots to speed operations and enhance situational awareness.

Officials of the Army the Cognitive Science and Applications Branch of the Army Combat Capability Development Command Soldier Center in Natick, Mass., issued a request for information (W911QY-25-R-MHMI) last week for the Multimodal Human-Machine Interface for Mixed Reality (XR) and Robotic Autonomous Systems (RAS) Control project.

The project seeks to assess industry's ability to develop cutting-edge technology for multimodal human-machine interfaces to control mixed reality and autonomous robotic systems.

Proposed solutions should help soldiers interface with mixed-reality and autonomous robots to minimize cognitive load and training requirements; enhance situational awareness; and enable soldiers to offload risk and work to robots, and instead help them focus on higher-level tasks.

Related: Artificial intelligence (AI) in unmanned vehicles

Researchers are interested in human-machine interfaces that use mixed-reality displays, augmented reality overlays, and intuitive graphical user interfaces; voice commands, spatialized audio cues, and natural language processing; force feedback devices, tactile sensors, and gesture recognition; as well as physiological monitoring, eye tracking, and brain-computer interfaces.

Proposals solutions should address the Modular Open System Architecture (MOSA) design approach; integrated inertial measurement units; surface electromyography; electroencephalogram; eye tracking, head movement, and voice; and mature software development kits and application programming interfaces.

System latency should be between 50 and 200 milliseconds; have input recogitation accuracy of between 80 and 95 percent; be set up and broken down in between two and 10 minutes; have battery power for two to six hours; have cyber security; and use Windows-based computing.

Companies interested should email responses and questions to the Army's Aaron Gardony no later than 15 Nov. 2024 at [email protected]. More information is online at https://sam.gov/opp/94b628e4144e42f0820d829d7c23dbf7/view.