Increased Space Situational Awareness through Augmented Reality Enhanced Common Operating Pictures

摘要

Support for space situational awareness (SSA) is required to enable military commanders and space operations center operators to maintain an advantage over our adversaries in the space enterprise. Well-designed visualization and human-computer interaction (HCI) technologies can be employed to allow them to perceive, reason about, explore, and act on timely intelligence, but current tools are lacking. A new generation of display modalities such as large-screen shared displays, touch-tables, and augmented reality (AR) can be used to power innovative visualization and data interaction capabilities, but these technologies must be implemented carefully in the context of potential operating environments. To apply novel display modalities and truly support operator needs in the context of space operations, Charles River Analytics is designing, developing, and validating a system for Space Operations Visualization Leveraging Augmented Reality (SOLAR). This paper provides an overview of our current prototype SOLAR application capabilities, with a focus on novel applications of augmented reality to promote SSA and shared awareness in a collaborative and dynamic mission-centric, high tempo, operations environment. We highlight unique integration points with traditional mission-centered displays where augmented reality is anticipated to add unique benefits, particularly for joint operations and situations where multiple operators must contribute different expertise, serve in different supporting roles, and make recommendations and/or decisions based on different levels of strategic and/or tactical understanding (e.g., due to differing information authorizations). The current SOLAR prototype has gone through four rounds of iteration with space operators. Consequently, we provide a summary of initial results acquired from actual space operators with respect to the demonstrated value SOLAR integrated augmented reality capabilities offer. Finally, we present conclusions focused on