The US Army is using its futuristic heads-up display to fight the coronavirus

• The US Army has repurposed its developmental Integrated Visual Augmentation System (IVAS) mixed-reality heads-up display into a fever detection device to help combat the novel coronavirus.
• Prototypes were modified so that users could use the digital thermal sensors on the goggles, designed for future combat, to scan body temperatures.
• The Army said that with these modified goggles, they were able to scan hundreds of soldiers in about half an hour.
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The US Army is using its developmental Integrated Visual Augmentation System (IVAS) heads-up display, which was created to help soldiers better wage war on future battlefields, to combat the novel coronavirus, the service revealed.

The Army recently tweaked the software for a number of IVAS prototype goggles to allow the devices to detect fevers, and soldiers at Fort Benning, Georgia have been using them to scan hundreds of troops on base.

"That's the genius of this system; we can use this technology today to fight the virus, even as we shape it into the combat system our Soldiers need tomorrow," Brig. Gen. Tony Potts, who heads PEO Soldier, said in a statement.

The Army has been partnering with Microsoft to create a mixed-reality heads-up display for the dismounted soldier that offers a warfighter immediate access to dozens of valuable combat tools in digital space.

With this system, soldiers can see in the dark, shoot around corners, translate text, take photos and video, and track targets, among other things.

Based on Microsoft's HoloLens technology, IVAS is the Soldier Lethality Cross-Functional Team's signature modernization effort, and the team has been pushing forward with its development even as the coronavirus continues to upend plans.

At the same time, the Army has figured out how to use its IVAS head-up display to help combat the virus.

The service is using the system to "rapidly assess the temperature of hundreds of Soldiers as they prepare for training" at Fort Benning, where thousands of soldiers go through a variety of different courses and training programs, the Army said in a statement.

One common symptom among individuals who have been infected by the coronavirus is a fever.

Last week, Tom Bowman, the director of IVAS Science & Technology Special Project Office with C5ISR's Night Vision Laboratory at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, realized that the HUD's digital thermal sensors used to detect enemies in the dark could be repurposed to spot temperature spikes.

Modified IVAS heads-up displays were quickly sent to Fort Benning, Georgia. With these devices, which display scanned forehead and inner eye temperatures in the user's goggles, soldiers were able to scan and process around 300 individuals in just 30 minutes.

The Army said that anyone who had a fever was sent to a nearby medical facility for evaluation.

Scanning was carried out indoors in a facility where commercial thermal referencing sources were used to calibrate the devices to room temperature.

"We've always planned for an agile software system and a digital platform that can be upgraded and adapted to use against emerging threats in the future. No one anticipated the next threat to emerge would be a virus, but that's the enemy we face today," Bowman said in a statement.

If everything goes according to plan, the Army intends to start fielding IVAS goggles to soldiers in the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2021, in summer of next year.

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