Senators John Thune (SD) and Jeff Moran (KS) both wore the state-of-the-art head mounted display the ECBC team developed and brought with them. The senators saw a virtual image and detailed assembly instructions integrated onto a physical model of a biodetector and its components as over 35 staffers looked on.

“These more advanced AR devices and techniques show that the potential of this technology goes far beyond smartphone games, and could one day have a major impact on manufacturing, transportation, medicine, and eventually the daily lives of average Americans,” said Thune. “AR technology promises to take all of the information that has been confined to the Internet over the past few decades and integrate it into the physical world, where such content can be most useful and do the most good.”

The ECBC team also spoke with industry developers who all testified later in the hearing, and are working on commercial applications.

“This was a terrific opportunity for our experts in this area to show the nation’s policymakers that ECBC is on the cutting edge of a transformative technology,” said ECBC Director Joseph Corriveau, Ph.D. “And that we are doing it with the safety of our warfighters, first responders and the nation from chemical biological threats foremost in our minds.”