Air Superiority 2030 — Carolyn Farino

Project: NGAD, Next Generation Air Dominance Leveraging AI and AR/VR

To kickoff this multi-year project, we were asked to architect, design and prototype multiple solutions to the question: “What will the next-gen warfighter’s experience be while executing multiple specific high-value mission scenarios in a 6th-gen fighter jet? A jet which uses AI to fuse, filter and interpret disparate multi-sensor data, ultimately providing only pertinent actionable information to the pilot precisely at the time of need, thereby meeting the most exacting pilot use-case requirements in combat?”

The mission was to develop mission-critical volumetric spatial UI's in an augmented (and, at times, ‘augmediated’) cockpit of the future. For stakeholder presentation, we developed and deployed a physical Virtual Reality demonstrator with a life-sized cockpit simulator.

Some of the future-leaning areas we tackled were:

Cognitive Decision Aids (AI/Pilot Teaming)
Multi-Spectrum Dominance
Mission System Suite of Tools
Fully Integrated Sensor Suite (Advanced Sensor Fusion)
Low Observability Visualization Feedback (Stealth)
Advanced 360° Situational Awareness
World Locked, Head Locked, and Cockpit Locked Augmented Displays.

Working directly with our assigned F-18 fighter jet pilot SME's, I obsessed about meeting the exacting military domain technical and usability requirements experienced while deployed on missions in multi-domain environments, leveraging the most pioneering technologies.