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Armored vehicles protect their crews by separating them from the battlefield with thick layers of steel and composite armor. That protection creates an unavoidable problem: visibility. Crews traditionally depend on periscopes, optical sights, cameras and internal displays to understand what is happening outside, forcing them to piece together information from several limited viewpoints.
Indra has developed an augmented reality system designed to make that armor effectively transparent to the crew. The new AR goggles combine imagery from cameras mounted around the vehicle into a 360-degree view that follows where the wearer is looking.
Instead of turning toward an internal monitor or looking through a narrow viewing device, an operator can simply look toward a particular side of the vehicle. The goggles display the corresponding external camera imagery in the user’s field of view, creating the impression of looking directly through the armored hull.
The system goes beyond displaying video. Its human-machine interface combines the camera feeds with information generated by the vehicle’s mission system, the central computing architecture responsible for bringing together sensor and operational data.
Information from multiple sources can be fused into one panoramic picture or arranged across customizable virtual displays visible through the goggles. According to NextGenDefense, this could allow personnel to access different information without filling the physical interior of the vehicle with additional screens.
Managing how much information reaches the wearer is another important part of the design. Armored-vehicle crews already operate under significant cognitive pressure, and adding more sensor feeds can become counterproductive. The company says the system therefore changes what it displays according to both the crew member’s role and the current phase of the mission.
A driver, for example, does not necessarily need the same information as a gunner or commander. Presenting each operator only with relevant data could reduce the time spent searching through separate displays while keeping attention on the surrounding environment.
For military operations, improved situational awareness is increasingly important as tanks face threats from multiple directions, including small drones, infantry and anti-armor weapons. Crews may have only seconds to understand where a threat is coming from while remaining protected inside the vehicle.
The technology is being developed as part of broader work on future European main battle tanks and upgrades for existing armored vehicles.
AR cannot literally make armor transparent, and its usefulness will ultimately depend on the quality, coverage and survivability of the external cameras and sensors feeding it. But the concept changes how crews interact with those sensors: rather than forcing personnel to look at the vehicle’s screens, it brings the outside battlefield directly into their natural field of view.
