A number of different virtual tools will be used to help to enhance the ability to prepare troops.
With the goal of innovating the training process, the Army has decided to work more augmented reality tools and virtual environments into its training process, including the use of games.
The goal is to ensure that troops will be more ready for major field exercises.
At the same time, this is making it possible to provide the necessary instruction and experience within the limitations of a tight budget. A Sources Sought notice has now been issued by the Army Contracting Command, requesting that interested companies provide a demonstration of mature technologies designed for military training that can be used at home bases. Tech should include augmented reality tools that individual soldiers will be able to use, or units that are smaller than a company.
These augmented reality and virtual tools would be employed for home base training.
The training would occur ahead of the Network Integration Evaluation (NIE) 15.1, which will occur in Fort Bliss, Texas and in White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico, near the end of the year in October and November. During this time, it is the intention of the Army to conduct an evaluation of its tactical network baseline among a number of different forms of scenarios of operations. It is the hope of command that it will receive the responses that it has been seeking by January 31.
The military has been expanding the types of technologies and virtual environments that it has been using for its training purposes in order to be able to continue to function within budgetary limitations. The Army simply does not have the resources available at the various individual bases to be able to provide all of its individual soldiers with the type of training that is required for a realistic experience. Technology is the solution that it has chosen for providing joint, international, interagency, and multinational environments. Simulations have been key to this effort.
Augmented reality presents the Army with the opportunity to train using a broad range of virtual programs worked into a single environment.
A poll has now shown that retirees in Canada are likely to have cell phones, though not the latest tech.
A recent report making mobile commerce news has revealed that while the vast majority of seniors living in Canada are now using a cell phone, only a small number of them have changed those mobile devices to the more modern smartphone version.
The Media Technology Monitor report could prove to be important information for marketing and commerce.
The research was conducted over the phone with the participation of 6,014 English speaking Canadians. The interviews were held during the spring and fall of 2013, in order to help to track the trends regarding ownership and usage of mobile devices. This included measuring the movements of these gadgets among those within the senior demographic. For the purposes of this study, seniors were defined as individuals who were 68 years old or older.
Approximately 61 percent of the seniors who were polled said that they owned mobile devices.
In all, there were 774 seniors who participated within this research. Though only 61 percent of them said that they had cell phones, in the younger age groups, a much higher 87 percent said that they carried these gadgets.
Similarly, only a tiny 13 percent of seniors said that they owned smartphones, where a notably higher 63 percent of younger Canadians said that they carried these devices.
Among those that did have smartphones, seniors seemed to prefer iPhones the most, though only just slightly more than Android based devices and BlackBerry phones.
A miniscule 7 percent of the senior participants in this study said that they used their smartphones for connecting to the internet. Younger respondents responded that 54 percent of them connected to the internet using their gadgets. Furthermore, only 2 percent had ever tried to use social media on their devices. Among the younger users, about a third of smartphone users had done so. Around 17 percent of seniors had sent text messages at some point, whereas 76 percent of the other respondents said that they had.
Approximately 12 percent of the seniors polled had tablets among their mobile devices. Most often, this consisted of an iPad.
