© Noah Shachtman
No more will soldiers' vision be limited to the socket-embedded spheres that God intended. The Pentagon now wants troops to see dangers behind them in real time, and able to tell if an object a kilometer away is a walking stick or an AK-47.
In a solicitation released today, Darpa, the Pentagon's far-out research branch, unveiled the Soldier Centric Imaging via Computational Cameras effort, or SCENICC. Imagine a suite of cameras that digitally capture a kilometer-wide, 360-degree sphere, representing the image in 3-D (!) onto a wearable eyepiece. You'd be able to literally see all around you, including behind yourself, and zooming in at will, creating a "stereoscopic/binocular system, simultaneously providing 10x zoom to both eyes." And you would do this all hands-free, apparently by barking out or pre-programming in a command - the solicitation leaves it up to a designer's imagination - when needing to adjust focus.
Read the full article on Wired.com
if all the money and effort that goes into killing and maiming people were put into keeping them alive, healthy and being able to have a great environment to live in.