I. Overview
What is the definition of Augmented Reality (AR)? For lack of linking to an official definition from Wikipedia, it’s overlaying digital objects on the real world. It started with an early version of the iPhone or Android phones, where you could fight Star Wars Tie Fighters by moving your phone around the 3-dimensional space of the room you were in.
More recently, AR manifested itself in one of the most popular games of all-time, Pokémon Go. It overlayed digital critters over the real world you were pointing your phone’s camera at. Throw a digital ball at a digital animal, capture it, get more points than your friends, and win.
Microsoft invented the Hololens, which we got early access to and later followed up with what would make AR a truly magical experience.
Apple’s 2nd worst-kept secret behind their self-driving car is for the Apple Glasses. Tim Cook can’t stop gushing about it to reporters. This isn’t the Jobs we’ve been accustomed to. We’ve been writing about what their patents mean for features, where their whole product strategy is headed, and how the AirPods are really just superhero ears.
Snapchat even came out with their version of special spectacles.
But it all pales in comparison for a project that’s been going for over a decade, won’t get fully delivered for another two decades, and already has a price tag over $1 trillion.
What is it?
It’s a $400,000 augmented reality helmet for an F-35 Lightning II stealth fighter jet. It’s built for United States military and manufactured by Lockheed Martin.
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F-35 Lightning II augmented reality combat helmet for fighter pilots.
II. Details on the Helmet
You can read all about the F-35 Lightning II on Wikipedia, so we can focus on the helmet. First a bit on how the latest, Generation III helmet works.
It’s custom fitted to each pilot’s head. They use 3D laser scanning technology to make sure the inner lining of the helmet is exactly form-fitted to the human who wears it. This is the exact opposite of one-size fits all.
It weighs about 4 pounds and when you’re rattling around at supersonic speeds, it’s important that the helmet doesn’t slip around your head because the target you’re aiming at could be off if you do. They’ve tried to reduce the weight by making it of carbon fiber.
You can look down below you or around you and see “through” the metal of the plane onto the earth and horizon below and in front of you. It will point out high value targets at a distance and in close range. Obviously it’s connected to a camera and sensor feed located around the plane, but is connected to the helmet with a series of cables. WiFi and Bluetooth aren’t real-time enough for these folks.
It has a digital night vision mode projected directly onto the lens of the helmet so you can see in the dark. But of course, dear Bond.
Last but not least, it has noise cancelling so the pilot can hear himself think. These ain’t your boss’s Bose headphone though. It produces “white noise” frequencies that exactly offsets and cancels the wind and jet engines.
Some of the “situational awareness” sensors include: real-time video, thermal heat, enemy targeting and prioritization at varying distances, as well as stats like altimeter, horizon, level, air speed, etc.
Here’s the official Rockwell Collins video from a few years back:
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Source: Humanizing