Microsoft's six -year program to make Hololens headphones for the US Army. Uu could be receiving additional help. If the Department of Defense approves the agreement, the company expand It is existing association With Anduril Industries, the Palmer Luckey defense startup, for the next stages of the Integrated Visual Aummatic System (IVAS) program.
Microsoft, who headed the program, would pass the transition to the supply of ai and cloud infrastructure. Meanwhile, Anduril would do almost everything else, including “production supervision, future development of hardware and software and delivery deadlines.”
Anduril makes a wide range of defense technology, including drone interceptors, sentinel towers, communications feeders, drones and even an autonomous submarine. But given Luckey's background as the main inventor of Oculus Rift, and, by extension, the modern consumer industry XR, the IVA program might be the most natural adjustment of the startup of defense technology.
Microsoft began working with the army in 2019, using a modified hololens 2 for a headset that, according to reports, felt like “a real life game of life Obligations. “The first prototypes allowed the soldiers to see a virtual map that shows the locations of their squad, a compass and the grid of their weapon. The thermal images served as an alternative to the traditional headphones of night vision.
But the program met with speed potholes, one of which was too familiar for many who tested poorly designed virtual reality games: it made them want to launch. In addition to the nausea, the headphones also led to visual fatigue and headaches. His bulk and limited field of vision and perhaps the worst of all, an emitted brightness (which could make them easy for an enemy) either did it either.
The problems contributed to the Congress that denied the army request to buy 6,900 peers as part of a Government Financing bill of 2023. Instead, he assigned $ 40 million for Microsoft to develop a new version, which the Army accepted Later that year. However, headphones have not yet reached the battlefield.
Bloomberg reported On Tuesday, that early comment of the last IVA prototypes is encouraging, but the army wants the cost to be “substantially lower than” each headset the $ 80,000 currently projected. The army could eventually order up to 121,000 devices, but the new version would still need to pass a high stress combat test this year before entering full production.
In December, Anduril associated with Operai to develop ai for the Pentagon. That agreement will cause the Chatgpt manufacturer to provide its GPT-4O and OPENAI O1 models to Anduril drone defense systems for the army.
This article originally appeared at Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ar-vr/microsoft -190223240.html? SRC = RSS