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Advancing wearable technology for user authentication – that’s the focus of a new mission of the U.S. Army’s tactical network modernization team. “Try to put in a password with tactical gloves when it’s a tiny keyboard – this is not an optimal solution,” claims Donald Coulter, senior science and technology adviser to the Network Cross-Functional Team. Under current capabilities, users are authenticated using passwords, common access cards, etc. to verify themselves. But these capabilities aren’t good enough in an operational environment. These can be broken, damaged or lost in an operational environment. 

Integrating wearables with the new augmented reality combat goggles, soldiers’ identities are verified using biometric data such as heartrates, gait, unique skin signatures and physical locations. The benefits of wearable technology is twofold: It makes the Army’s systems increasingly secure, while being more intuitive for the soldier in the field.One of the first places the Army plans to “experiment and prove out” wearables is with the Integrated Visual Augmentation System — essentially artificial intelligence-enhanced goggles that assist with navigation, targeting, and advanced night and thermal vision.

According to reports by c4isrnet.com, the Army finds the technology quite promising, “especially when you talk about the infusion of more artificial intelligence and machine-learning capacity — to really study, to capture more data and tag it, and really understand the unique characteristics of each person,” Coulter said, adding that the wearable technology is mature, and his team may field it in the coming years.

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