SBIR-STTR Award

DARPA has identified an opportunity to leverage recent advances in Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) technology to develop a robust tool for distributed collaboration across a number of use cases. That is a system for conducting collaborative meetings between users that can be anywhere and where the only limitation to participation is the availability of wireless network access. The advantages to this approach go beyond increased screen real estate – it can free collaborators from having to meet in a specific location while addressing privacy shortcomings currently found with desktop and laptop distributed collaboration when in the presence of other people. Additionally, in situations where a meeting in person is not possible or is undesirable, as we have seen with the recent pandemic, this technology provides a means to preserve the essential elements of effective collaboration, while addressing some of the drawbacks of current distributed solutions. Several associated key problems must be solved to achieve the goal of distributed collaborative meetings that can be held anywhere. These are mobility, privacy, multi-modal system interaction, the incorporation of existing tools and applications as well as intuitive navigation of data and applications within the environment. A number of these have been addressed for use in VR, including distributed gaming and simple collaborative document generation. The key barrier for this topic and unaddressed in the commercial world is the provision of private communications among collaborators and between each user and the system. True mobility requires that the system be used not only when isolated in a secure room, but also when operating in open environments where others are present and can observe the user either by visual and auditory means or by using technology to measure RF emissions, facial and hand/body movements, etc. We propose a combination Virtual & Augmented Reality system along with sensors and tracking technology that provides a solution for all of these issues.

Recent advances in Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) technology present an opportunity to provide a robust tool for distributed collaboration for a number of common use cases. The proposed system enables collaborative meetings between users that can be anywhere and where the only limitation to participation is the availability of network access. The advantages of VR/AR in this approach go beyond increased screen real estate. It frees collaborators from having to meet in a specific location while addressing privacy shortcomings currently found with desktop and laptop distributed collaboration when in the presence of other people. Additionally, in situations where meeting in person is not possible or undesirable, as in the recent pandemic, this technology provides a means to preserve the essential elements of effective collaboration while addressing a number of the drawbacks of current distributed solutions. Several associated key problems must be solved to achieve the goal of distributed collaborative meetings that can be held anywhere. These are mobility, privacy, multi-modal system interaction, the incorporation of existing tools and applications as well as intuitive navigation of data and applications within the environment. In Phase I, we evaluated these issues and have designed the software and hardware architecture needed to address them so that a working integrated prototype can be developed in Phase II.