Augmented reality displays have been used by the military for decades. Their usage has traditionally been confined mostly to aircraft, first in the form of "heads up" displays in the cockpit and more recently (as with the F-35) integrated directly into helmets, giving pilots the ability to essentially look through the aircraft and see the skies around them and ground below them. But now, augmented reality is going underwater. Engineers at the US Navy's Naval Surface Warfare Center Panama City Division (NSWC PCD) are developing a diver's helmet with a built-in "heads up" display that can guide divers to where they need to be, locate the objects they're looking for, and even "see" in near-zero visibility.

The Divers Augmented Vision Display (DAVID) helmet can display high-resolution sonar imagery overlaid on the environment around the diver, as well as other data transmitted from a boat above. The project, led by Underwater Systems Development Project Engineer Dennis Gallagher (no relation to this author) is preparing for its first underwater tests in October.

DAVID is similar in its approach to the sorts of augmented reality displays being explored in the industrial world—in fields like aircraft manufacturing and maintenance, for example, where augmented reality headsets can show workers precisely where to put a rivet, or locate a system problem based on diagnostic data. DAVID's display can be turned on and off by the diver and repositioned within the mask by the support team on the surface at the diver's request, and it can display a huge variety of helpful visuals: text messages from above, diagrams and photos of objects the diver is looking for or working with, even floating virtual instructions on how to operate or fix equipment in the diver's field of vision.

"By building this HUD directly inside the dive helmet instead of attaching a display on the outside," Gallagher explained, "it can provide a capability similar to something from an Iron Man movie. You have everything you visually need right there within the helmet."

The NSWC PCD team has worked hands-on with divers to develop DAVID, and it is now working on designing a second generation of components that can be used both in diver helmet systems and full face diving masks. Next year, the hardware will be "hardened" for expanded field tests with a wider range of Navy dive units.