Can You Feel Me Now? Wearable Concept for Soldier Communications

Soldiers and other tactical teams often need critical information regarding direction and distance. The challenge then becomes, how best to convey this information to someone who must act as quickly as possible, particularly when that person is out of line of sight. In this study, we compared three methods to communicate direction and distance: (a) tactile for both, (b) mixed - tactile for direction and audio for distance, and (c) audio for both. Twenty Soldiers participated in each communication condition. Performance measures included response time and accuracy of direction and distance. Results suggested that the mixed condition reduced time needed to accurately determine direction and distance to a threat compared to the all-tactile or all-audio communication conditions.