SBIR/STTR Award attributes
The United States Air Force (USAF) is a large enterprise with many operational processes executed throughout the organization, in controlled and uncontrolled environments. These processes and the environments in which they take place are often complex, with people routinely distributed to execute on missions and in training scenarios. The distributed nature of USAF operational and training work creates fragility in associated processes and the flow of critical information. Supporting all levels and aspects of USAF warfare competency is training. Air Education and Training Command (AETC) operations are complex and take place in distributed environments. AETC has identified a mission need, as validated with the 412th Test Wing, 372nd Training Squadron and the 367th Training Support Squadron (note attached Letter of Support), for training tools that emulate that complexity, and importantly, also extend to those fragile and distributed environments. Considering the point about extending training and emulating complex and chaotic environments, it is logical that Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR) and Extended Reality (XR) are crucial aspects of USAF training plans. Parallel to this are traditional and analog military training formats - everything from flying a training flight to doing a 1:1 static aircraft walkthrough fam ground event. End user discovery discussions with personnel from 412th Test Wing, 372nd Training Squadron and the 367th Training Support Squadron (note attached Letter of Support) brought to light several gaps to address for USAF to maximize the training value from AR/VR: Data collection is not structured and consistent across training formats Effective linkages between AR/VR tools and learning management systems are not yet in place As such, the principal problem we propose to address is in the structured and consistent training and evaluation data collection at the point of student performance - both for digital formats (e.g. AR/VR) and for analog ones. The overall objective of this phase of work is to test and validate, with USAF training squadron personnel, the feasibility of the COTS Adyton Platform and grading / evaluation use case configuration for addressing training data collection needs. Specific objectives are: Investigate the training and grading process critical data (input and output) sources. Identify training data creation, flow and choke points within the organization. Identify mobile software user needs and structured data capture requirements for existing core training processes and workflows. Investigate AR/VR (currently used and expected/potential) system created training data and requirements for structured capture. Test UI design with users to assess validity of improved and mobile data capture.
