Warfighter Head Movement in Operational Scenarios and its Impact on Digital Visual Augmentation Systems

摘要

This paper studies head motion profiles from twenty-seven individual Warfighters conducting operationally relevant scenarios in order to better understand the phenomenology of head motion in high-intensity environments. This work will improve the design of future combat systems. As the military transitions from analog to digital technology, the scientific community is being confronted with new dynamic parameters of system performance, specifically: frame rate, refresh rate, and latency. For helmet-mounted visual augmentation systems (VAS), the impact of these parameters is most evident during head movement. The source data is collected by using small inertial measurement unit (IMU) data loggers affixed to Warfighters' helmets in order to collect the Warfighter's observation vector. This data is analyzed to determine unique characteristics of those head movements, including arc length of rotational movements and associated accelerations, scan path, observation vector amplitudes, and movement/fixation times. This paper presents findings that derive recommendations for frame rate, maximum system latency, and system resolution as informed by head motion in order to aid in requirements generation for digital VAS, including mixed reality (MR) including of Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR).