Development deal for Primordial

Primordial recently announced that it has been awarded more than $848,000 in contracts from the US Army to develop a geographically enabled augmented reality system for soldiers.

These contracts will enable the US-based defence company to advance the development of its vision software product which overlays tactical cues in a soldier's helmet-mounted display.

The product, called Primordial Soldier, is designed to leverage the soldier’s software capabilities by converting overhead maps into augmented reality views. For example, instead of displaying spot reports as text messages, Primordial Soldier displays an arrow pointing toward a reported enemy's location.

Primordial Soldier is said to include ground guidance for directing soldiers to targets while avoiding obstacles and Unit Detection for differentiating friend from foe in a soldier's mounted display.

The software also enables soldiers to report the positions of enemy units, thereby exposing them to others who may be unable to see them due to camouflage, obstacles, or distance. From an operational standpoint, unit detection eliminates the need for interrogators and transponders as it leverages information already broadcast by soldiers to identify units on the battlefield.

According to Primordial, the first phase of this contract is designed to improve a soldier's situational awareness on a battlefield by displaying tactical geospatial intelligence in a head-mounted display and on a Personal Digital Assistant.

The system will improve the soldier's navigational and organisational abilities by labelling buildings, providing routing guidance, and tracking the locations of friendly forces.

The PDA will display digital maps of the battlefield and serve as the soldier's interface to the software, allowing the combatant to automatically generate travel routes and easily add and use tactical geospatial intelligence on maps.