GridRaster selected to US Air Force’s SBIR program to provide immersive XR simulations and training
May 6, 2021 – GridRaster Inc., a provider of cloud-based XR platforms that power scalable augmented, virtual and mixed reality (AR/VR/MR) experiences on mobile devices for enterprises, has announced that it has been selected to the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program of the United States Air Force (USAF) to provide large scale hyper-realistic immersive simulations and training of pilots and support crew.
According to GridRaster, the traditional pilot training environment is expensive, not flexible, offline, not easily scalable and comes with inherent risks. Aircrew train themselves on a multi-million-dollar aircraft, expend fuel and other consumables, risk wear and tear and maintenance. The rate at which the pilots can be trained is limited by availability of physical aircraft for training purposes and severely constrains the amount of practise trainee pilots can get.
AR and VR can provide a flexible platform to conduct training that does not require the use of expensive aircraft, costly consumables, or additional maintenance costs. Furthermore, AR/VR applications can be configured to provide a near real-world combat operation environment, and the hardware can be used for many combat training missions and environments in which pilots and staff can have more mission rehearsals. As a result, GridRaster anticipates that the USAF will be able to substantially reduce its training budget and still get effective results.
“AR and VR technologies save money, create a much safer environment for trainees and help them gain better operational and situational awareness, access to more rehearsals, decreased time required to model varied and customizable terrains and provide a highly engaging mission planning to students,” said Rishi Ranjan, CEO of GridRaster. “We look forward to working with the stakeholders at USAF to adapt our commercial GridRaster platform to address national security needs.”
GridRaster states that its technology provides a platform for the USAF to unlock the full potential of AR/VR/MR that can rapidly adapt to the advancements and changing landscape of modern warfare by facilitating large scale hyper-realistic immersive simulations and training of pilots and support crew.
The GridRaster XR platform utilizes distributed cloud computing/on-premises remote servers with Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) to achieve high-fidelity rendering of complex 3D content, and real-time alignment and tracking of virtual models/scenes over the real-world objects. Furthermore, the platform supports a unified and shared synthetic training environment that is flexible enough to allow for mission rehearsals of most types and intuitive enough to make training effective, according to the company.
The SBIR program encourages US-based small businesses to engage in Federal research and development efforts with the potential for commercialization. Through a competitive awards-based program, SBIR enables small businesses to explore their technological potential and provide the incentive to profit from its commercialization. For more information on the program, click here.
For more information on GridRaster and its platform for scalable XR experiences, please visit the company’s website.
This article was originally written by Sam Sprigg for auganix