A wearable Augmented Reality testbed for navigation and control, built solely with commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) hardware

Personal applications employing Augmented Reality (AR) technology for information systems require ease of use and wearability. Progress in hardware miniaturization is enabling the development of wearable testbeds for such applications, providing sufficient computing power for the demanding AR tasks. RSC has assembled a wearable testbed for AR applications, comprising only of commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) hardware components. The system is designed to be worn like a jacket, with all hardware attached and affixed to a vest frame (Xybernaut) with concealed routing of cables under Velcro channels. Two possible configurations allow the system to be used either in a stand-alone mode ("itWARNS") or to be linked to a larger scale multi-modal user interface testbed ("WIMMIS"). Completely tetherless operation is made possible by wireless digital connections as well as analog video and 3D audio connections over radio frequencies (RF). This paper describes these two testbed configurations as well as some of the AR applications, developed on this testbed.