Navy Maintenance Made Easier with Augmented Reality

Holochip photo

ARLINGTON, Virginia — Adaptive lens manufacturer Holochip is developing augmented reality goggles for Navy maintenance training and remote field support that it plans to have available by the end of this year.

The Augmented Reality Headset for Maintainers program’s Holochip H50 AR goggles provide hands-free access to digital work instructions, 3D schematics and real-time diagnostics and are designed to improve the service’s maintenance efficiency, reduce errors and streamline repairs, said Holochip CEO Rob Batchko.

Holochip is in the sixth year of the goggles’ expansion supported by the Navy Small Business Innovation Research/Small Business Technology Transfer programs. The company is currently implementing further electronics, software and ergonomic improvements. The first prototypes will be available at the end of 2025, he said in an interview.

Holochip’s AR goggles have the same “footprint, look and feel” as a typical flight deck goggle, Batchko said.

“They’re basically comfortable safety goggles; they have no obstruction of your natural field of view,” he said. “The idea is to have a very comfortable headset that doesn’t obstruct any of your field of view [and] really provides the augmented visual support.”

The product provides AI-enabled gesture recognition, where the user is “able to just use your hands in space to flip through a virtual manual that appears as a virtual desktop in front of you,” which is “one way of” augmenting the maintenance information in real time and increasing their situational awareness so they’re not looking down at a set of manuals, Batchko said.

Additionally, the H50 enables “see what I see” capabilities so users can bring in subject matter experts for remote, collaborative support in augmented reality, he said.

Holochip also developed a custom simultaneous location and mapping, or SLAM, system that can put digital twins or 3D assets into the maintainer’s AR space “to match the actual asset that’s being repaired or maintained, so the maintainer has access to … libraries of models in real time that can overlay in real space exactly with where they’re at,” he said.

Holochip recently partnered with Israeli optical display company Lumus, integrating its waveguide technology in the physical part of the goggles, which enhances brightness regulation and adjustment, advanced resolution and wider field-of-view. ND

Topics: Navy News