Haptics, including touch, pressure, temperature, proprioceptive and kinesthetic, and vibratory sensors, can provide critical cues for successful task completion in many military domains. To date, integration of haptic cues has been limited within augmented and virtual realities (AR andVR) due to technology limitations and challenges in appropriately activating this broad, sensitive perceptual system. With the establishment of the Army Futures Command in 2018 (Lacdan, 2018), the Army is positioned to push innovation at a fast pace to meet the needs of future operations. As the Army moves towards development of the Synthetic Training Environment (STE) under this Futures Command, critical research questions regarding how humans best perceive and comprehend information and interact with innovative training technologies in a team environment – localized or distributed – need to be considered. When and how to integrate haptics cues into synthetic training capabilities to optimize human learning and capabilities for operational success requires a guiding framework for haptic cue integration – covering technologies available, cues provided, and human perceptual capabilities and limitations across experience levels. Further, cross-modal impact of haptics plus other sensory cues need to be considered, as design advantages can be realized to produce psychological fidelity critical for optimal training (Straus, Lewis, Connor, et al., 2018).
This paper will present a haptics framework for synthetic training integration. This framework will be built based on sensory cue fidelity assessments for example ground and air systems use cases (e.g., tactical crew training for Close Combat Tactical Trainer [CCTT], aircrew for UH-60 Blackhawks), outlining which haptic sensations are critical for learning and training transfer. Further, human perceptual capabilities and limitations against available technology solutions will be considered to guide appropriate integration of haptics capabilities to maximize psychological fidelity for the human operator, resulting in optimal learning and training transfer.