Anduril's EagleEye: Palmer Luckey and Meta Collaborate on Advanced Military Mixed Reality System

Anduril's new EagleEye MR helmet sees Palmer Luckey return to his VR roots | TechCrunch

In the latest bid by a Silicon Valley defense firm to assert its own solution for the Army's mixed-reality ambitions, Anduril Industries on Monday unveiled "EagleEye," a helmeted computing system that seeks to turn soldiers into AI-augmented warfighters. The launch is notable given that the initiative is led by Anduri's co-founder Palmer Luckey, who previously started the pioneering VR company, Oculus, which was acquired by Meta. Anduril describes EagleEye as a modular "family of systems" built atop its Lattice software that puts command-and-control tools, sensor feeds, and AI directly into a soldier's field of vision. The company claims the system can integrate live video feeds; features rear- and side-sensors to alert operators to threats; and can track teammates in real-time. EagleEye variations include a helmet, visor and glasses. The launch comes as the U.S. Army looks to expand its pool of mixed-reality gear suppliers. It had been using Microsoft's Integrated Visual Augmentation System (IVAS), a $22 billion program awarded in 2018, but after years of issues, the Army handed control of the contract to Anduril this February. Then in September, Anduril won a $159 million award to prototype a new mixed-reality system for soldiers, part of a broader Soldier Borne Mission Command effort. Anduril said the award was "the largest effort of its kind" to outfit "every soldier with superhuman perception and decision-making capabilities." Earlier this year, Anduril also announced a partnership with Meta to develop extended reality (XR) devices for the military, marking an unexpected reunion between Luckey and his former employer. "I am glad to be working with Meta once again," Luckey said in a blog post. "My mission has long been to turn warfighters into technomancers, and the products we are building with Meta do just that." EagleEye has a long history: the concept first appeared in Anduril's first pitch deck draft, before investors convinced the startup's team to focus on software like Lattice. "Going toe-to-toe with Microsoft and Magic Leap would have been demoralizing windmill-tilting driven by magical thinking," Luckey said in a post on X in February. "Everything is different now. The world is ready, and so is Anduril."

Palmer Luckey's Anduril launches EagleEye military helmet with help from buddy Zuck

Anduril, the military tech company founded by Oculus creator Palmer Luckey, has announced the first hardware to come out of its recent partnership with Meta: EagleEye, an AI-powered mixed-reality (MR) system designed to be built into soldiers' helmets. The modular hardware is a "family of systems," according to Anduril's announcement, including a heads-up display, spatial audio, and radio frequency detection. It can display mission briefings and orders, overlay maps and other information during combat, and control drones and military robotics. "We don't want to give service members a new tool -- we're giving them a new teammate," says Luckey. "The idea of an AI partner embedded in your display has been imagined for decades. EagleEye is the first time it's real." "I am glad to be working with Meta once again," Luckey said in a blog post at the time. "My mission has long been to turn warfighters into technomancers, and the products we are building with Meta do just that."

Palmer Luckey and Mark Zuckerberg Are Putting Cat Ears on the US Military

Palmer Luckey and Mark Zuckerberg never quite cracked virtual reality headsets for consumers, but they're taking another crack at it with the US military as their new audience. On Monday, Luckey's military tech company Anduril announced its AI-powered mixed reality system EagleEye, which will put hardware right into the helmets of Army soldiers and provide them with a heads-up display to view information in real-time. “We don’t want to give service members a new toolâ€"we’re giving them a new teammate,†Palmer Luckey, Anduril’s founder, said in a statement. “The idea of an AI partner embedded in your display has been imagined for decades. EagleEye is the first time it’s real.†According to Anduril, EagleEye is a modular system that includes configurations for helmets, visors, and glasses. The company also claims its system will balance weight by reducing the "bulk of traditional night vision goggles" while introducing sensors "aligned with a warfighter's center of gravity." The helmet module, notably, gives soldiers tactical cat ears. Frankly, we live in a time where it's entirely impossible to know if that is the most efficient design for the effort or if it's just another CEO with the sense of humor of a 13-year-old doing a multi-million dollar meme, a la Elon Musk running a government project named after a memecoin or making Tesla models spell out the word "SEXY." Luckey used the announcement that his company was taking over a multi-billion-dollar mixed-reality goggles contract with the Army earlier this year to re-create his famous and meme-ified TIME Magazine cover, so it's not like he's above that kind of thing. The heads-up display is perhaps the most marketable part of Anduril's project, which was made in part with the help of Mark Zuckerberg and Meta, and the company showed it off with a preview video that looks like it was ripped right out of Call of Duty. The display will reportedly give soldiers access to information like mission briefings, map overlays, and real-time insights like identifying the positioning of other actors in the field. EagleEye is something of a culmination of Anduril's work on the Army’s Soldier Borne Mission Command (SBMC) and Soldier Borne Mission Commandâ€"Architecture (SBMC-A) programs, which is a rebrand of the Integrated Visual Augmentation System the company took over from Microsoft. Last month, the Army announced that Luckey's Anduril and Mark Zuckerberg's Meta received contracts from the Army to produce prototype mixed-reality combat goggles. We'll see if they have any other plans to UwU-fiy the military.