Knowing the operational area as well as possible and being able to grasp its particular challenges can be decisive for missions and war. However, creating a situation picture on a haptic 2D map has its limits. This is exactly where our innovation project ACOP comes in: Augmented reality is used to create a realistic interactive 3D visualization of the situation on the battlefield. This technology makes the situation tangible in the proverbial sense, allowing staff and decision-makers to immerse themselves in the situation and interact with the visualization. In the "virtual sandbox in 3D", soldiers can move troops, estimate geofactors such as height differences and view a realistic and up-to-date situation picture.
ACOP: Augmented Common Operation Picture
The system offers another decisive advantage: it enables distributed access to the same situation picture, which means that the staffs do not have to physically meet in one place to see the same thing. The war in Ukraine has shown the advantage of this. There, command posts are fought with priority in order to eliminate the enemy commanders. A joint issue of orders is therefore always a security risk. The use of ACOP, which enables distributed command and control, not only reduces the risk of being detected by enemy forces, but also increases the safety of commanders.
With the help of high-performance mixed reality glasses, our innovation project enables realistic, interactive and true-to-scale 3D visualization of the situation on the battlefield. Soldiers can control the system with intuitive hand gestures. The idea behind this is that a realistic representation of geofactors leads to a better tactical understanding of the situation and more effective deployment of forces.
The Bundeswehr's Cyber Innovation Hub is testing ACOP together with the Bundeswehr as part of exercises and training at the Army's Combat Simulation Center. The advantage of ACOP: until now, only stationary computers, simulation software and 2D maps were available for military exercises. Realistic terrain assessment with topographical profiles was not yet possible with these resources.
ACOP also offers a connection to the Bundeswehr's command information system. So far, the testers at the Army Combat Simulation Center have concluded that ACOP creates a more realistic training effect for the training staff. They are also more cost-effective than conventional exercises, as the terrain to be practiced can be brought to Wildflecken via AR. This also protects the environment.
The situation display via ACOP is not just limited to land forces, but can also be used for airspace coordination or the display of naval units at sea. This makes our innovation project versatile for use in the Bundeswehr and shows that innovative technologies make an important contribution to the effective deployment of forces and resources.