Proposed System Model for Android Augmented Reality System in Malaysia Military Operations – Unit Positions

. An Android system or application will be as information devices to soldier unit in gathering or distributing their information between the allied units. Augmented reality interfaces other than provides a user friendly and intuitive; it will create awareness and better understanding when on certain military operations risk is at the high level.

At Proceedings of Interservice / Industry Training, Simulation & Education Conference (I/ITSEC)

2002, on December 2 to 5 at Orlando, Florida, Mark A. Livingston and teams has been present paper “An Augmented Reality System for Military Operations in Urban Terrain” [1], as proposed idea in developing augmented reality technology in military operational areas. Metzger (1993) also proposing a concept to develop augmented reality technology within improvising military equipments, so called as an earlier idea which has been discussed [2]. The idea explore in improving soldier’s helmet visor to display add-ons information in augmented and virtual format.

Over the years, there have several ideas been proposed in manipulating augmented and virtual reality within development of defenses technology. Improving in military areas always leading any form of research and development technology. Majority governments will prepare high budget to invest in establish proper defences technology to the country, in ensuring national’s security always at the optimum level.

In 2009, the U.S. Army Research Laboratory (ARL) proposed Android as an operating system to be using as foundation in development military applications [3]. Advantages using Android for military use can be list as below:

1. Low cost: compared to devices that need to be custom designed and developed for military operations even rugged compare to Android devices.
2. Soldier familiarity: Android devices have been developed based on commercial use and significantly easy to familiar. It wills benefits in terms of training costs.
3. Relatively large storage space: Android devices equipped with quite large scale of spaces and expendables through external storage card.
4. Built-in rechargeable battery: Android devices come with rechargeable battery and easy to exchange with spare batteries.

Augmented Reality

Augmented reality system is a combination of real object with virtual object, enhancement of computer-generated content which is tied on specific locations, activities and objects. Milgram et al. (1994) proposed augmented reality as a part of component in Reality-Virtuality Continuum and grow wider in virtual reality research, since the concept evolved as an extension or variation from previous model.

Fig.1. Reality-Virtuality Continuum [Milgram et al. (1994)]

Henrysson et al. (2004) proposed definition for augmented reality is a combination between real contexts with relevance visual information generated by computer. Visual information could be variety of text, images, audios and videos as additional information to the main subject.

However, definition for augmented reality could be different from vary researchers. Every outcome will depend on their specific scope of the research as long sharing same elements and principles to practice. 

Nevertheless, Azuma et al. (1997), Kaufmann (2003) and Zhou et al. (2008) agreed that any implementation of augmented reality should meet the objectives as below:

1. Real-world context and virtual elements generated should be combined together.
2. Context should be in real time and interactive.
3. Visual display been registered in form of three dimensional (3D) perspective.

Hollerer et al. (2004) defines augmented reality is a combination of real environment and computer-generated information, within the real environment, real time where by virtual objects and physical objects were aligned together. Ludwig et al. (2005) in their papers has defined, augmented reality is a human and computer interaction (HCI) with virtual objects been added to real senses through camera within the real time. Zhou et al. (2008) agreed that augmented reality should rely on the theory where virtual imagery generated by computer exactly overlay physical objects within the real time.

Android

Android is an open source operating system which using Linux as a core. Android is a wholly owned brand by Google since taking over on 2005, mainly focus and designed for mobile devices such as smart phones, tablet computers and gadgets, either touch screen or keypad [13]. Gong et al. (2008) defined the Android platform were composed of the operating system, middleware, application’s software and user interface [14]. It also found that Android platform was first mobile operating system and software platform built for open source and complete mobile device. Android users represent 68.8% in 2012 market share where consist of 497.1 million units have been shipment around the world [15]. It has been a phenomenon since the first debut of Android which keeps increasing from quarter to quarter. Android come as an open source and user-friendly function make it most chosen either to developer or user, whereby as a key factor makes Android lead the mobile phone operating system market share. Regardless the hardware capability, Android operating system itself supports wide range functionality in terms of input and output devices, sensors, communication media, connectivity and keeps growing [16]. This will be as key factor application’s developer interested to venture in Android development.

Related Works

Development augmented reality technology in military areas has been explored widely for the past decades. However still minimal in exploring augmented reality on android platform whereby suitable been using in defence technology. Research and development on android augmented reality as a military equipment will promise lot of benefits to the governments and communities. As been discussed before, any development on android platform will not incur huge investment, system familiarity, expendable and come with backup resources for mobility. This development will explore certain aspects such as application for android platform with augmented reality technology and GIS structure in handling the data.

Proposed System Model

Core for this proposed system model is on GIS. All data will be stored in GIS, whereby a data center can be access through the android devices. This system model will show how the modules handle the data flow on the entire software environment.

GIS Module. GIS module for this purpose will be used Quantum GIS (QGIS) as an open source GIS that support to run for android. QGIS supports vary of format such as vector, raster and database formats.

Update Module. Latitude and longitude for specific instruction will be sent to store in GIS. Latitude and longitude will be defined specifically through the android devices. In Android Application Programming Interface (API), android.location package will be used to establish the location by activate through Global Positioning System (GPS).

There will be three (3) different items in update the location.

• Soldier unit location - To update own location, system will define current device location which been hold by the soldier through the GPS.
• Target location - Soldier will focus target location using the camera. From the camera, system will calculate target latitude and longitude with based on horizontal angle of view in degrees and also current latitude and longitude for the devices. Android API android.hardware package will be used for this purpose.
• Enemy location - Same with target location, rather than using camera to show target location it will show enemy location. It will bring same concept and calculation as target location.

Communicate Module. Every single soldier unit want to communicate in the between devices need to clarify the specific instruction in terms of to avoid any hassle. There have two (2) items to consider before initiate the communication.

• Request location - Each soldier unit can request location for specific unit on their current location.
• Order instruction - On certain level of authority, soldier unit has role to initiate an order to certain soldier unit.

Tracing Module. When application has been run on the android devices, soldier unit can view from camera to trace the parameter. From the devices will collect data from GIS to show information for any allied unit location, target location and enemy location.

On this module, augmented reality technology will be implementing as core function. Real context will be mixed together with visual object to show any information from the GIS.

Conclusion

Android Augmented Reality System applications are key features in military technologies and future studies are expected to emphasize and advance more application development on Android platform. This paper has been proposed system model in development of an Android platform, whereby it can be has a stepping stone into development military technologies on the Android platform. This application has been developed with meet certain aspects whereby development in an Android environment with augmented reality as the core function. The GIS will be as a main data handler and producing the result. The application will make data can be manage in a proper way and establish a better communication between the units. Even the application just a part of any military operation been taken, it will contribute in terms of make the operation smooth, execute in proper way with recorded data.

Reference

Shukran M. A. M., Kamaruzaman M., Sharif W. S. S., Fadhil M. S., Ariffin M. S., (2014)      “Proposed System Model for Android Augmented Reality System in Malaysia Military Operations – Unit Positions”. Applied Mechanics and Materials Vols 548-549 (2014) pp 1493-1497

Military Human Resource Management System

The emergence of information technology leads to the introduction of Human Resource Information Systems (HRIS) as the facilitator in managing human resources. Many organizations have adopted HRIS to assist their daily human resources operations. Having the technology solely is insufficient. To be useful, HRIS must align and satisfy the needs of the organization and its users. If an organization is to plan effectively and make sensible allocations of resources to information systems tasks such as HRIS, a holistic view of its management is essential.

                          

The Ministry of Defence Malaysia (MinDef) is one of the Malaysian government departments responsible for implementation of government defense policy and is the headquarters of the Malaysian Armed Forces which includes the Malaysian Army, Royal Malaysian Air Force and Royal Malaysian Navy.  Its principal objectives are to defend Malaysia and its interests, and to strengthen international peace and stability. Hishammuddin Hussein is the current defense minister. So far, what I have gathered from MinDef regarding their MIS is it’s divided into two sectors; the civilian sectors and the military sectors. But for this review, I will focus more on the military.

Basically, there are huge numbers of MIS that MinDef use depending on the suitability of different goals and needs. One of the most important military MIS is their Human Resources Information Systems (HRIS). It integrates three important elements in military, namely people, process, product. HRIS plays an important role for any organization to effectively manage its human assets. In military, this HRIS is particularly crucial as it comprises a huge number of personnel who not only have various sets of skills but also are physically scattered at remote locations. This HRIS possess the selection of right personnel for right tasks during troop deployment in the battlefield. Right selection is very critical as in war there is no mistakes should be made. Wrong decision could lead loss of personnel and mission could be a failure due to the unsuitability of skills to accomplish the mission. Basically, the system is incorporating the necessary elements of military operations which suit the needs and goals of the mission and country.

However, there are several distinct elements that make HRIS for military differs from others. In particular, HRIS for military emphasizes the needs of having additional system security as well as systems features that keep track of personnel security inspection, their specific medical reports and physical tests. As an organization that has to protect the nation’s security, any information should be guarded from external access and must always be safe. Thus, HRIS for military needs to consider internal access only and offers a facility to keep track of original documents.

Military Geographical Information System (MGIS)

The layer of Geographical Information System

Murshardin (2001) in his paper titled "Impact of Information Technology and Information Warfare on Malaysian Armed Forces (MAF)" has emphasized the importance of Information and Communication Technology (lCT) in Revolution of Military Affair (RMA) for future warfare. Computer and electronic devices may become dangerous weapon in the future warfare. Therefore, information that includes geospatial and attribute will play a key role in any future operation.

The old Military Geographic Information system

Military Geospatial Information (MGI) provides information of our world to enable Military Geographic Information System (MGIS) extracting knowledge for specific strategies and planning purposes (Australian Defence Organisation, 2000). The MGI plays a very important role in military operation. Its importance is almost as critical as the importance of logistic supports such as ammunition, ration, petrol and water, which can affect the success of military operation. According to Major Zambri (2002) in his “Development of Terrain Analysis Database Using Military Geographic Information System”, Sun Tzu (500 B.C.) has explained the importance of terrain or MGI for total victory of military operation other than knowing own and enemy forces capabilities (Giles, 2001).

The need of MGI is even more so for the present and future condition of warfare due to the expansion of operation areas, increased mobility and also rapid changes have occurred in the technology that supports the modem warfare. In contrast to these increases, the time available to respond to problems has decreased.

At present, topographic maps at the scale of 1 :50,000 are widely used by military community and they have been familiar with the graphics and map symbologies represented on the topographic map (Zambri, 2002). However, these elements cannot provide tactical information about certain features. For example, the road element portrayed on the topographic map does not have tactical information such as the width and type of construction material. This limits the use of topographic map for tactical planning purposes. Tactical information of features that are significant to military operation is usually stored in Terrain Analysis (TA) database (Zambri, 2002). The TA database comprises several layers namely slope, vegetation, soil, transportation, surface drainage and obstacle. The TA database at the scale of 1:50,000 is part of the MGI databases that is useful for planning tactical operation (Zambri, 2002). Technology of MGIS has enabled the management of tactical information in TA database be implemented digitally and effectively. For instance, 1 Topo Survey Squadron of Australia Defence Forces (ADF) and 42 Survey Regiment of United Kingdom Defence Forces have utilized MGIS for collecting, managing and utilizing their TA database to produce various products of Tactical Decision Aid (TDA) and Rapid Mapping Support (RMS) (Abdul Rahman, 1997 ; Flegg,2002).

   The Information and Communication Technology (lCT) that includes military geospatial information will play a key role in the Revolution of Military Affair (RMA) for future warfare. The Terrain Analysis (TA) database is one of the military geospatial information that needs to be established in the Malaysian Armed Forces (MAF) in order to enable various Military Geographic Information System (MGIS) to perform analyses and produce Tactical Decision Aids (TDA) products.

Network Centric Operation (NCO)

In the past decade, we have witnessed that the management information systems has undergone a phenomenal growth in their capabilities. Their functions have become more powerful and sophisticated which has made it as one of the important tools in aiding the management efficiency and effectiveness. All organizations try not to be left behind in advancing their management information system, including also the military sector of our country as well. On military perspective, it is much more different. The information system is also known as the Military intelligence. The military information system (military intelligence) is a military discipline that gathers a number of information collection and analysis to provide guidance and direction to commanders in support of their decisions making (Ruiz, 2010). Murshardin (2001) in his paper titled "Impact of Information Technology and Information Warfare on Malaysian Armed Forces (MAF)" has emphasized the importance of Information and Communication Technology (lCT) in Revolution of Military Affair (RMA) for future warfare. He also mentioned that computer and electronic devices may become dangerous weapon in the future warfare. Therefore, information attribute will play a key role in any future operation. In Malaysia, the most important information system that being uses by the Malaysian Army Forces (MAF) is the Network Centric Operation (NCO).

The NCO is the combination of emerging tactics, techniques and procedures that a fully or even partially networked force can employ to create a decisive war-fighting advantage (Arthur, 2013). In general, the NCO is a battle simulation program created by the US Defence Department around the 90s, which known as the Network Centric Warfare, with the use of US war doctrine that is supported by sophisticated IT (Alberts, 2002).  According to Alberts (2002) in “Information Age Transformation: Getting to a 21st Century Military”, network centric warfare can trace its immediate origins to 1996 when Admiral William Owens introduced the concept of a ‘system of systems’ in a paper of the same name published by the US Institute National Security Studies. In Malaysia, the concept of this system was brought in 2008, and then it was agreed to create it in 2013 which was announced by the Minister of Defence on that time, which is Datuk Sri Dr. Ahmad Zahid Hamidi. SAPURA Technologies Sdn. Bhd., with its technological partner THALES,has been appointed to develop the Development of Network Centric operation (NCO) Malaysian Armed Force’s program at the cost of RM140 million (Utusan, 2013).

The Malaysian NCO is described as the full spectrum dominance in full control, self-awareness and self-synchronisation. Full Spectrum Dominance in full control NCO stands for fully information gathering and denying information from being access to the enemy operation. Shared awareness and self-synchronization means that all of the commanders in each level from Division until the bottom of the platoon and section can make decisions more quickly and efficiently and at the same time planning to reduce, confusing, destroying or delaying information about the companions from reaching in the hands of enemy.

Generally, Network Centric Operation (NCO) is it helps to translate an information advantage into a decisive warfighting advantage. The information gathered from soldiers and devices will enable the battalion to acquire information advantage which enabled by the robust networking of well-informed geographically perspectives. The information gathered is them shared within the battalion and contribute to the shared situational awareness which increase the knowledge of commander’s decision making and exploits IT for networking forces. NCO will also help to gain warfighting advantage which it helps to exploitation of behavioural change and new doctrine to enable the self-synchronization, speed of command and increase combat power.

Basically, the NCO in each individual unit will follow the same system and link into the same battle awareness with the whole team of friends. How much the information should be shared is up to the discretion of commanders for the smooth running of operations. In NCO, the tracking down and destroying is put in one unit of war fighter, and information of the target that need to be destroyed is in the result of the information sharing with other units of war fighter under this NCO system. Commanders may restrict how much information should be shared and the NCO personnel will ensure that only the necessary information only displayed on the units’ BMS (the screen displaying the NCO information) but the unit can easily access other information through the same network if he needs it. According to Major Hassan, he said that the ATM has reported that they has already been using its NCO system for approximately two years, and it was currently employed in combat operations in Lahad Datu in Sabah.

Malaysian Future Soldier

The Malaysian Army currently has a soldier modernization program called the Future Soldier System. Malaysia’s Future Soldier Systems is being built around concepts familiar to all similar programmers. It is driven by the need to respond to and realize the benefits of the revolution in military affairs, which foresees that future warfare will be dynamic and cover both the physical and cyber domains, although certain aspects remain absolute to the infantryman, namely the dimensions of war such as fear, fatigue, uncertainties and danger. Other features include an increase in urban terrain and more extensive lines of communication resulting in non-linear warfare, continuous operations, and increased connectivity amongst network centric forces with an increased integration between units, arms and services.

The future soldier systems

One of the objectives in the Development Plan for the Malaysian Army is to be in line with the concept of the future soldier and embark on the development of the Future Soldier Systems which consist of a network of systems designed to function as a single integrated system.

The capabilities designated and required to do this are in five categories. The first is Situational Awareness which represents the core of the soldier system, permitting information sharing in real time and providing the soldier with awareness of nearby friends. The Force Protection element covers protection and weapon impacts and environmental factors, equipment and combat uniforms that allow the soldier to survive as well as to provide enhancements to force protection through electronic means. In Lethality terms, the scope of the Future Soldier System is to achieve the desired affects against selected targets, the ability to detect recognize and destroy enemy targets, Sustainability is the ability to maintain the soldier in the tactical environment and a mobility enhancing device which allows soldiers to navigate the battlefield more easily.

Under the FSS, The Malaysian Army plans to equip all soldiers with Personal Protection Equipment (PPE) such as Kevlar helmets, Kevlar vests, Oakley goggles and ear protection equipment. The program also includes arming all the standard issue M$ carbines with SOPMOD kits, as well as equipping soldiers with a Glock series pistol. Sapura, a Malaysian electronics company, is offering their SAKTI soldier system concept via work in three areas: Head Sub-System (HSS), Body Sub-System (BSS) and Weapon Sub-System (WSS). The HSS consists of a Helmet–Mounted Micro Camera and night vision capability with a data output, helmet-mounted display and earpiece and microphone; the WSS consists of a the Rifle Control Unit consisting of a five-button wireless controller for one handed use with key features including push to talk for the radio, switching the HMD on and off, turning the HMD brightness up and down as well as video transmission to friendly forces. The BSS consists of a controller system, energy unit with a power pack for the communication interface, micro-camera and HMD with a single polymer lithium ion battery for up to ten hours of operation; a communications interface for secure IP based radio which from the image is a Thales St@rmille radio and finally a navigation unit with a display for blue force tracking and situational awareness, colour digital mapping and terrain and urban profile analysis. The system displayed is visually similar to the Kord Defence SmartGrip RIC developed in partnership with Thales Australia.

Malaysian Future Soldier Prototype

The Malaysian military have identified four major challenges in realizing the future soldier vision: budget, technology, human capital and operation environment. In budget terms, affordability will remain the ultimate challenge with the Malaysian soldier modernization program focused on its core business and to optimize the availability of operating expenditure. Limited allocations in the development plan mean that key areas in the plan have to be prioritized. In terms of technological advancement, it is recognized that while there is a start to investment, it won’t stop and that the plan must take into account technological advancement in any plans for upgrading. Human capital development will require the improvement of entry qualifications into the Army and the introduction of new doctrine, tactics, techniques and procedures to exploit the system to its full potential. The Malaysian Army is already addressing these factors through the K-Force program. In terms of the operational environment, the Malaysian SMP will have a huge impact on the operational environment notably the chain of command and decision making. To share the common operating picture and situational awareness, mission tempo will increase and commanders at all levels must be able to exploit this advantage. The present command structure must also be reviewed and the consequences that come from the introduction of the future soldier system will change the way that soldiers think, behave and conduct themselves in a mission. All these changes must also be managed and directed for units to be effective in achieving their goals.