Raytheon and Motion Reality ink agreement For virtual applications

Raytheon Company and Motion Reality Inc. have entered into an exclusive value-added reseller agreement to offer virtual 3-D mission and training applications to military, law enforcement and security forces.

The agreement pairs Raytheon's leading defense and government systems expertise with MRI's pioneering motion-capture technology, VIRTSIM, a widely recognized standard-setter in immersive virtual simulation.

"Together, Raytheon and MRI offer more responsive, flexible and complete end-to-end mission rehearsal and training solutions," said Glynn Raymer, vice president, Raytheon Network Centric Systems Combat Systems. "We are also looking at innovative applications that can lead to greater efficiencies in new product design, prototyping and testing."

"Raytheon and MRI have already developed a virtual simulation system to improve warfighter conditioning for the detection of improvised explosive device activity," said Jack Costello, vice president, NCS Strategic Planning and lead, Raytheon IED Defeat Task Force. "This immersive training solution will give our forces increased awareness necessary to defeat IEDs."

VIRTSIM can immerse up to 12 subjects wearing wireless head-mounted displays and using actual or simulated weapons. This real-time, untethered experience is enhanced by muscle stimulation technology, and the systems can be networked from multiple locations for distributed training.

"MRI's technology is unrivaled in its ability to accurately capture full-body 3-D motion," said Dr. Tom McLaughlin, MRI CEO.

The immersive 360-degree systems support force-on-force training and virtual artificially intelligent avatars that respond to actions and voice commands. "Our licensed motion-capture technology was used in the current blockbuster movie 'AVATAR,'" noted McLaughlin.

Source: Raytheon