HTX Labs, LLC SBIR Phase I Award, March 2020

HTX Labs' EMPACT® VR training platform is a commercial software product that is designed and developed to address the challenges in bringing virtual reality and immersive technology to the Department of Defense (DoD) and to enterprise markets.  A primary barrier to broad adoption of immersive training is the cost and effort associated with developing and delivering relevant immersive content in an efficient manner.  To that end, EMPACT offers a no-code content authoring tool, EMPACT Studio, that is used to accelerate the development of immersive content required to address the training needs of the warfighter.  EMPACT Studio enables subject matter experts (SMEs) to immerse themselves within relevant 6DOF virtual environments and capture their expertise by modeling the “exemplar” behavior for a specific series of tasks.  Examples of “tasks” could include performing an emergency procedure within an MH-47 Chinook, executing a pre-mission checklist on an M2/M3 Bradley Fighting Vehicle, or carrying out maintenance on an F/A-18 Hornet. After recording a new training course, the expert can review the performance, edit or amend it as necessary, entitle it to the appropriate users, and publish it through the EMPACT platform for novices to consume. With tools like EMPACT Studio, we now have an opportunity to ensure that the expert has the proper synthetic environment available that is both aesthetically and contextually accurate specific to the type of expertise that they need to capture and deliver. During this Phase 1 period, HTX proposes to conduct specific research and development relevant to adapting the EMPACT platform to accelerate the creation of synthetic environments that may then be used within Studio to rapidly author immersive training content.  This will ultimately allow more opportunities for providing a structured and systematic approach to measure human performance and expertise, with the ability to quantify the efficacy of the training and programmatically compare the performance of experts and novices alike.