Charles River Analytics Inc, developer of intelligent systems solutions, will present its Space Battle Management Command and Control (SBMC2) mixed reality application at BAE Systems’ booth at the 34th Space Symposium. Charles River will demonstrate the SOLAR application as an integrated front-end operator-facing component built upon BAE Systems’ space battle management command and control (SBMC2) testbed. The symposium takes place in Colorado Springs, CO, from April 16-19, 2018. Visit Charles River Analytics and BAE Systems at booth #230.
Charles River helps commanders, staff, and decision makers quickly develop the space situational awareness (SSA) necessary to effectively monitor, assess, and act to maintain critical space assets and ensure the success of the theater operations they support.
SOLAR is part of the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency’s (DARPA) Hallmark program, which aims to provide breakthrough, real-time capabilities in space by fusing information from dynamic sources and reducing the time required by operators to execute decisions. The two-and-a-half-year SOLAR effort was awarded by the Air Force Research Laboratory and is valued near $1.5 million.
Accurately tracking space activities is more difficult—and more important—than ever. The increasing number of unpredictable players in space creates the need for more advanced software tools to anticipate and respond to actions. Often, SSA operators must rely on outdated processes—and therefore incomplete information—to execute U.S. military operations.
For SOLAR, the Charles River team will explore how novel information display and interaction concepts (primarily augmented and mixed reality technologies) can enhance space operators’ ability to maintain the active SSA necessary for making confident, accurate, and real-time decisions.
“We’re researching touch tables and sharable displays for SOLAR to automate many of the operators’ now-manual activities, like orbit calculations and exhaustive analyses,” said Dr. Michael Jenkins, Senior Scientist at Charles River and SOLAR Principal Investigator. “We plan to use augmented and virtual reality technologies so SSA decision makers can quickly experience multiple potential actions and their modeled effects, making them better able to meet 21st-century space domain demands.”
Charles River is also advancing another effort—called PICASSA—under the Hallmark program. Under PICASSA, the Charles River team is developing an analytic tool to improve threat detection in space.
Related Article
Out of this world: 50 OSS acquires Augmented Reality
This material is based upon work supported by the United States Air Force and DARPA under Contract No. FA8750-17-C-0170. Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the United States Air Force or DARPA. Distribution Statement “A” (Approved for Public Release, Distribution Unlimited).
