9:00 am - 11:00 am The Virtual Soldier Program: Automated Modeling And Simulation Tools For Lightening The Load Of Warfighters

Today’s Warfighter often carries an inordinate load that can lead to injuries and encumbered performance. Equipment is distributed among squad members with little, if any regard for differences in strength and anthropometry. Consequently, the current focus on human-centric design requires a modeling and simulation tool that can reduce the load Warfighters carry and can help distribute equipment among squad member more efficiently. This, in turn, increases effectiveness, saves money, saves time, and saves lives. The University of Iowa’s Virtual Soldier Research (VSR) Program have experience and expertise tailored to providing precisely this kind of tool. Learn how these lessons learned can incorporated into your solution

What will be covered:

• Our high fidelity, autonomous digital human who predicts posture, motion, strength for R&D
• Equipment shape and placement to increase warfighter effectiveness
• How mission and Warfighter characteristics can change the equipments effectiveness How you will benefit:
• Discover how optimization for automatically distributing equipment lights the load
• Examine physics-based dynamic motion prediction for predicting how Warfighters move
• Learn actual equipment models that link with motion prediction to determine how Warfighters interact with equipment

Session Leader:

Professor Karim Abdel-Malek
Director, Virtual Soldier Research Program
University of Iowa

10:30 am - 12:30 pm GPS Denied Tracking Equipment for the Dismounted Soldier

The ability to provide accurate and reliable navigation information to dismounted soldiers in all areas and phases of military operations and especially in GPS denied areas will greatly increase situational awareness and operational effectiveness. Personnel operating in urban canyons, indoors, and in caves where GPS is not available or in situations where GPS is actively being spoofed cannot use navigation, mapping, and other systems that rely on accurate positioning information.

This focus day presentation explores the expansion of an embedded training project to provide soldiers with expanded situational awareness in theater. The solution leverages a Personnel Tracking and Monitoring System that is able to wirelessly track the location and orientation of multiple individuals in an indoor (GPS denied) or outdoor environment. It does not require the environment to be equipped with any sensors, communications devices, or other infrastructure.

What will be covered:

• Issues with tracking and tracking accuracy in urban canyons, indoors, and underground
• Overview of technologies available for GPS denied tracking and indoor tracking
• Combining technologies to provide reliable, infrastructure free tracking in GPS denied areas
• Integration of tracking with other sensor systems (radiation detection, personnel status, health information, equipment and power status)
• Local user interfaces for individual soldiers, which enable
  • Mission planning & review
  • Sharing of the tracked position and ‘sand table’ communication information
  • After action review of mission data for lessons learned
• Approaches for enhancing existing GPS applications and services.

Session Leader:

Dr. Carole Teolis
CTO
TRX Systems, Inc.

2:00 pm - 4:30 pm Ground Guidance: Revolutionary Off-Road Navigation Software for the Land Warrior and Movement Tracking System (MTS)

This session will cover Primordial’s Ground Guidance route planning software and their ongoing efforts to integrate with the Land Warrior and MTS. Ground Guidance is patented software that plans fast and concealed routes for dismounted and mounted soldiers through on- and off-road terrain. Land Warrior is a soldier system that provides a moving map and blue force information in a heads-up display. MTS is a blue force tracking (BFT) system used by more than 30,000 logistical vehicles in Afghanistan and Iraq. Primordial is integrating Ground Guidance into the Land Warrior and MTS to support rapidly generating primary, alternate, contingent, and emergency (PACE) routes before a mission and performing emergency rerouting during a mission.

What will be covered:

• Techniques for extracting routable land cover data from high-resolution Buckeye aerial imagery and military topographic maps
• Challenges preparing for an upcoming fielding to the 5th Special Forces Group (SFG)

How you will benefit:

• Learn the state-of-the-art in on- and off-road route planning for military personnel
• See a demonstration of Ground Guidance in action
• Learn about commercial route planning applications for iPhone and Andriod platforms

Session Leader :

Randy L. Milbert
President
Primordial