Very cool - from engadget:
Ukraine's military wants HoloLens helmets for its tank commanders
It's not easy to see out of a tank (that's the point) but in order to be effective on the battlefield, their crews need to know what's going on around them. Modern tanks often have a variety cameras mounted to their exteriors to help the soldiers inside get a better view but crews still have to rely on monitors in the cabin to see out. However, a new HoloLens-enabled helmet from Limpid Armor can give tank commanders a better view of their surroundings just by turning their heads.
The helmet, dubbed the Circular Review System (CRS), sets a HoloLens headset directly onto the front of its frame. Video feeds gathered from the tank's exterior cameras are stitched together and displayed through the headset as a "mixed reality" view to the wearer. With it, tank crews are afforded a 360-degree view of the situation in both the visible and infrared spectrums. Not only that, the CRS can tag enemy and friendly soldiers, designate targets and feed critical information to the commander.
Very clever idea - simple enough to stitch the image together - there are lots of image processing libraries out there for the Raspberry Pi so I would imagine that something could be adapted for whatever platform they are using for this. I like the IFF feature.
Also love that it is a COTS project - most of the components are Commercial Off The Shelf as opposed to some fancy one-off custom design. Much cheaper, more reliable and better function - the marketplace forces a product to evolve, something springing from the mind of one engineer may have overlooked problems. Witness all the problems with the F-35 fighter.
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