INSTINCT INSTINCT

Augmented Reality Augmented Reality

Technical Demonstrator 3Technical Demonstrator 3

Summary ReportSummary Report

What could Augmented Reality do for

Security and Counter-Terrorism over

the next 10 years?

About CONTEST

The UK counter-terrorism strategy, known

as CONTEST, focuses on the most significant

security threat to the people of the UK today

–

the threat from international terrorism.

The aim of CONTEST is to reduce the risk to

the UK and its interests overseas from

international terrorism, so that people can

go about their lives freely and with

confidence. The strategy comprises four key

elements:

Pursue: to stop terrorist attacks;

Prevent: to stop people becoming

terrorists or supporting violent

extremism;

Protect: to strengthen our protection

against terrorist attack;

Prepare: where an attack cannot be

stopped, to mitigate its impact.

About TD3

Technology Demonstrator No.3 (TD3) is part

of the INSTINCT programme and aims to

answer the key question:

What could Augmented Reality do for

Security and Counter-Terrorism over the

next 10 years?

In October 2010 Logica was selected to run

the TD3 programme.

About INSTINCT

INSTINCT (Innovative Science and

Technology in Counter-Terrorism) is a cross-

Government programme led by the Office for

Security and Counter-Terrorism (OSCT).

It seeks innovative solutions to address the

challenges within CONTEST. It aims to move

at pace, intelligently manage risk, and make

Government an effective customer of

innovation. To do this it needs understanding

of the innovation community, smarter

influence over external innovation and better

coordination of investments in innovative

ideas and solutions.

Benefits of AR

The largest benefits accrue in areas that

assist humans with complex tasks where

provision of timely, accurate and

synchronised information can multiply

effectiveness. With AR, users may perform

tasks better in at least four key areas of

security and counter-terrorism processes.

Learning: Augmented Reality may be

used to learn about environments and

processes, without being present,

offering training, education, rehearsal,

and simulation. The benefit is better

preparedness.

Perceiving : Augmented Reality may

be used to sense and present

phenomena that humans cannot,

drawing upon sensor and data inputs to

gather information about a situation.

The benefit is better situation

awareness.

Visualisation : Augmented Reality can

enable users to visualise information in

a multitude of new, interactive and

immersive ways. Benefits include better

situation awareness, and reduced user

knowledge gaps.

Collaboration : Augmented Reality can

provide the mechanisms for users to

collaborate effectively and share

knowledge efficiently. The benefit is

improved team working, mutual

situation awareness, and better decision

making ability.

What is Augmented Reality?

Augmented Reality (AR) is an immersive

experience. It enhances your perception by

providing supplementary information.

Augmented Reality has been around for

years in subtle forms such as satellite

navigation, vehicle parking sensors and

head up displays. Technical advances now

mean that the price has dropped to make it

more accessible to all.

It has emerged as an exciting, new

consumer technology in the last couple of

years, providing new ways to assist users

by enhancing their senses based on

location, role and task.

AR is routinely used on smart-phones for

directions, social networking and everyday

situational awareness, for example,

“where’s the nearest coffee shop?”

As it matures, Augmented Reality could

transform situational awareness for front

line operators in security and counter-

terrorism, for the first time delivering

enhanced situational awareness through

effective presentation of context relevant

information and helping to deliver the 4 P’s

of CONTEST.

Conducting the trials

To present suppliers with a realistic scenario for

technology trials, the team worked closely with

subject matter experts to develop four highly

plausible scenarios. They built a trials test bed

which could integrate AR technology rapidly and

stimulate it with realistic data. This provided an

extremely efficient and effective means of

evaluating a wide range of technical maturity

levels in a complex, time critical scenarios.

These scenarios enabled the ability of different

AR technologies to fulfil many tasks to be

evaluated within both a simulated and the real-

life test environments. At the same time, these

scenarios remained benign and non-disruptive

to the general public. An Ethics Policy ensured

that the experimentation was carried out to a

high ethical standard.

Reaching out to the world’s

technologists

At the heart of this project was an intensive

trial of AR technologies using simulated

scenarios within a test environment that was

designed and delivered in just four months.

The project culminated in a Showcase Event

where selected suppliers demonstrated their

technologies to stakeholders across the private

and public sectors.

A key goal was to engage with a wide range of

innovative technology suppliers, from

academia and smaller companies through to

large multi-nationals. To identify suppliers, a

broad market search was conducted across

thousands of potential organisations

worldwide. From a list of over 1000, more than

100 organisations applied to participate in the

project and after a rigorous selection process,

an expert panel chose 27 to take forward into

the trials and showcase.

The team worked closely with the technology

companies, drawing on their expertise whilst

protecting their Intellectual Property, and each

had the opportunity to participate in a

dedicated one-day trial during which the

drivers and constraints of the counter-

terrorism environment were investigated.

Promising areas for

development

Conducting the experiments in realistic

scenarios provided a unique opportunity to

access innovative work in industry and

academia, enabling INSTINCT to understand

the state of the market at an early stage of

technical maturity.

Challenges for the future

The project considered challenges in the near,

mid, and long term out to a decade hence.

Security and counter-terrorism operations

ideally require that technologies are configured

dynamically to suit every new day’s need, yet

these new ways must work first time every

time. Compared to today’s security and counter

-terrorism community, the threat is

progressively more flexible and innovative.

Finding new ways to exploit the market

effectively, and deploying new technology

rapidly within existing infrastructures, is key to

retaining the operational advantage. TD3

developed a roadmap which suggested likely

routes for technology exploitation.

The route to capability delivery

Technology does not equal capability. To deliver

front line impact, AR development needs to

mature in parallel with many associated factors.

Thus interoperability across organisational

boundaries, training, information management,

infrastructure, processes, security, robustness,

and logistics amongst many other issues will all

play a key role in the effective deployment of

AR for CT. In addition, human factors, usability

aspects need to be addressed.

Obstacles that reduce delivery speed need to be

addressed, for instance by matching the pace of

Apple’s iPhone application accreditation

scheme. This performs a rapid test, security

check, and integration validation prior to

release.

The showcase event helped many key

organisations to significantly raise their

awareness of AR technology and build a much

greater appreciation of the challenges of

operational deployment.

Short Term Benefits

The project has provided senior security

stakeholders, in both the Government and the

private sector, with valuable insight into the state

of the augmented reality market and how this

technology can be used to undertake a range of

vital tasks in security and counter-terrorism.

The unprecedented access that it has given early-

stage technology innovators to both real-world

data and specialist counter-terrorism expertise is

already driving product development forward and

translating into new opportunities for those

involved.

Opportunities for today

The community now has an opportunity to

establish an enterprise architecture and

governance structure for S&CT that is

specifically focussed upon information

assurance and cross-domain interoperability.

Focussing on effectiveness and benefits for UK

S&CT at this early stage will enable developing

technologies to be rapidly trialled and adopted

across the S&CT domain and mitigate the

impact of uncoordinated implementation of new

technology. An enterprise architecture offers

the opportunity to host diverse AR technologies

within an managed approach, and encourage a

development community tailored to delivering

integrated solutions.

Technology Evolution

The project identified the likely evolutionary route

for each component technology.

Enduring Capability

The project will also provide an enduring AR test

capability at Nottingham University. This will

provide a unique platform for further research

and development into nurturing and maturing

technology and requirements. It aims to build

communities, and assist academia in their work

into researching the use of AR whilst helping to

stimulate business and investment. The insight

gained into augmented reality will also enable

INSTINCT to work with other agencies to improve

education and communication with the general

public about terrorist threats.

The focal point that the project has created has

helped to stimulate collaboration between

different organisations to bring together their

technologies and research. Using this project as a

springboard, INSTINCT will continue to promote

collaborative working between augmented reality

researchers and technology companies, rapidly

delivering significant benefits to both Government

and the science and technology community.

Technology Roadmap

The technology roadmap for AR shows it is

currently highly skewed towards the visual

technologies, but with much interest and

research in non-visual areas. As AR matures,

technology currently on the periphery of AR may

be accessed to provide non-visual capabilities

such as audio, haptics, and the use of artificial

and humanistic intelligence to provide computer

support to real AR tasks. Technology

miniaturisation and communications will also

play an important part.

The extent of the research community in these

areas also suggests a good potential pipeline of

novel approaches. Augmented reality is

considered to have the potential to be a game-

changing technology, for the first time delivering

enhanced situational awareness through

effective presentation of context relevant

information to security and counter-terrorism

agents.

Obtain more

information about the project

http://www.td3-ar.com

instinct@td3-ar.com

How to engage with the

Enduring Capability

Contact Dr Sue Jones

https://www.horizon.ac.uk/

horizon@nottingham.ac.uk

http://www.logica.com

Keats House, Springfield Drive, Leatherhead, Surrey KT22 7LP