Situational Awareness (SA) is the perception of our surrounding, comprehension of its meaning and projection of its status. The lack of SA is a causal factor in many military accidents. In this paper, Augmented Reality (AR) techniques are used to support SA and interaction in time-pressuring crisis situations. Firstly, existing military projects are reviewed. Then, the design of a military AR-based architecture as support to SA, called RAIOM (Augmented Reality for the identification of Military Objectives), is introduced and validated with real users considering traditional military scenarios. A distributed processing in a client-server architecture was implemented using an optical see-through AR glasses by the client side and a mini board by the server side. An AR application using the proposed AR architecture was deployed as an integrated proof of concept. The deployment was evaluated to measure the effectiveness, efficiency and usability of the AR software architecture in terms of three levels of SA such as perception, comprehension and projection. Different techniques were used in the evaluation such as User Testing, Thinking Aloud Protocol and SAGAT / SART. Also the User Experience (UX) was evaluated using UMUX questionnaire. The results were optimistic according to the degree of compliance of the SA got by the participants in the experiment.

1 III-LIDI Instituto de Investigación en Informática, Facultad de Informática Universidad Nacional de La Plata (UNLP), Argentina {mjabasolo, degiusti, mnaiouf, ppesado}@lidi.info.unlp.edu.ar 2 Comisión de Investigaciones Científicas de la Provincia de Buenos Aires (CICPBA), Argentina 3 Facultad de Cs.Exactas.Universidad Nacional del Centrode la Pcia.de Bs.As.(UNICEN), Argentina 4 Universidad Técnica de Ambato, Ecuador 5 Instituto de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas para la Defensa (CITEDEF), Argentina 6 Universidad de las Islas Baleares (UIB), España 7 Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha (UCLM), España 8 Universidad Nacional del Sur (UNS), Argentina

This paper presents a proposal of a model for identification, selection and classification of Situational Awareness (SA) requirements together with the design of AR-based solutions. In this way, a three dimensional model that considers three main elements: SA phase, SA characteristics and interaction modality is introduced. This 3D-SA model facilitates the analysis, first, and the design later, of systems where the concept of SA is essential. The presented 3D-SA model tries to facilitate the use and application of AR-based solutions for SA for different kinds of stakeholders (developers, maintainers, etc.) as well as to cover a deficiency in the gap between SA requirements and SA design solutions. A particular use of the 3D-SA model in the military field is presented.

During military operations, the battlefields become fractured zones where the level of confusion, noise and ambiguity impact on achieving tactical objectives. Situational Awareness (SA) becomes a challenge because the unstable perception of the situation leads to a degraded understanding that disables the soldier in projecting the proper results. To meet this challenge various military projects have focused their efforts on designing integrated digital system to support decision-making for military personnel in unknown environments. This paper presents the state of art of military systems using Augmented Reality (AR) in the battlefield.

La linea de investigacion y desarrollo presentada consiste en estudiar, desarrollar y evaluar aplicaciones de realidad virtual, realidad aumentada, interfaces avanzadas y Television Digital Interactiva (TVDi). Uno de los principales objetivos es la formacion de recursos humanos y fortalecimiento de la investigacion mediante el trabajo intergrupal entre diferentes instituciones nacionales y extranjeras. Se concluyo en 2013 el proyecto Formacion de Recursos Humanos e Investigacion en Vision e Informatica Grafica (FRIVIG) de la AECI. El mismo fue llevado a cabo durante 3 anos consecutivos y posibilito la compra de equipamiento, el intercambio de investigadores, la formacion de recursos humanos, y la creacion de una carrera de post grado en la tematica. En los dos ultimos anos se comenzo a trabajar en la evaluacion de aplicaciones educativas para TVDi, coordinando la Red de Aplicaciones y Usabilidad de la Television Digital Interactiva (RedAUTI) de la CYTED.