Houston, TX (June 22, 2021) - HTX Labs, developer of the EMPACT® Immersive Training Platform, announced today it has been awarded a new Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II contract with the US Navy. HTX Labs worked jointly with Air Force and Navy contracting officers to successfully transfer its AFWERX Phase II contract across military branches, leveraging the results from previous Air Force efforts to deliver value to the Navy.
This new Navy SBIR award is targeted at further advancing the EMPACT platform to enable the development and delivery of immersive training content for both current and incoming student pilots with the Chief of Naval Air Training (CNATRA) Primary Flight Training Program.
In particular, the project will include enhancements to HTX’s T-6B virtual aircraft and EMPACT platform necessary to create and distribute portable, multi-modal immersive training to teach aircraft system academics, provide normal and emergency procedural training with consequential learning, and implement new analytics capture and visualization capabilities required to address the evolving training needs of Navy pilots.
“Development of virtual reality part-task training is important to the Navy. Chief of Naval Air Training is constantly evaluating new and innovative ways to improve pilot and flight officer training”, said LCDR Kerry “Rooster” Bistline TRAWING FOUR AVENGER BATCELL (Innovation) Officer In Charge, “These types of systems offer the potential to further enhance student preparation, understanding, and application of procedures throughout the ground and flight phases of training.”
To provide Navy airmen with critical pilot training content, the HTX team will leverage and enhance their EMPACT Studio immersive content authoring product to satisfy NAVAIR A1-T6BAA-NFM-100 (NATOPS) flight manual requirements, allowing NAVAIR to create expert-led and student-centered interactive pilot training material. EMPACT enables the rapid creation and deployment of immersive training content, enabling Navy airmen to experience training on Virtual Reality (VR) head-mounted displays (HMDs), laptops, and tablets, allowing students to effectively train anytime, anywhere, on any device to more broadly scale and sustain immersive training across the Navy.
“We are excited to have successfully transferred our Air Force SBIR Phase II to the US Navy to continue the important work of leveraging immersive technology to train pilots more effectively, to shorten the training cycle, and to play a role in addressing the pilot shortage across the US military”, said Scott Schneider, co-Founder, and CEO of HTX Labs. “We look forward to expanding our capabilities to deliver immersive training for the T-6B as well as other airframes to support the Navy’s mission of developing a highly prepared and proficient airman“.
