Microsoft’s six-year-old program to make HoloLens headsets for the US Army could be getting some extra help. If the Department of Defense approves the deal, the company will expand its existing partnership with Anduril Industries, Palmer Luckey’s defense startup, for the next stages of the Integrated Visual Augmentation System (IVAS) program.
Microsoft, which spearheaded the program, would transition into supplying AI and cloud infrastructure. Meanwhile, Anduril would do pretty much everything else, including “oversight of production, future development of hardware and software and delivery timelines.”
Anduril makes a wide array of defense tech, including drone interceptors, sentry towers, comms jammers, drones and even an autonomous submarine. But given Luckey’s background as the primary inventor of the Oculus Rift — and, by extension, the modern consumer XR industry — the IVAS program could perhaps be the defense tech startup’s most natural fit.
Microsoft started working with the Army in 2019, using a modified HoloLens 2 for a headset that reportedly felt like “a real-life game of Call of Duty.” Early prototypes allowed soldiers to see a virtual map showing their squad’s locations, a compass and their weapon’s reticle. Thermal imaging served as an alternative to traditional night vision headsets.
But the program ran into speed bumps, one of which was all too familiar to many who tried poorly designed VR games: It made them want to hurl. In addition to nausea, the headsets also led to eyestrain and headaches. Their bulk, limited field of view and — perhaps worst of all — an emitted glow (which could make them easy pickings for an enemy) didn’t help, either.
The problems contributed to Congress denying the Army’s request to buy 6,900 pairs as part of a 2023 government funding bill. Instead, it allocated $40 million for Microsoft to develop a new version, which the Army accepted later that year. However, the headset has yet to make it onto the battlefield.
Bloomberg reported on Tuesday that early feedback of the latest IVAS prototypes is encouraging, but the Army wants the cost to be “substantially less than” each headset’s currently projected $80,000. The Army could eventually order as many as 121,000 devices, but the new version would still need to pass a high-stress combat test this year before going into full production.
In December, Anduril partnered with OpenAI to develop AI for the Pentagon. That deal will have the ChatGPT maker supplying its GPT-4o and OpenAI o1 models to Anduril’s drone defense systems for the military.
This article originally appeared on Tech Reader at https://www.engadget.com/ar-vr/microsoft-wants-to-hand-off-much-of-its-army-hololens-program-to-palmer-luckeys-anduril-190223240.html?src=rss
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