Tactical Environmental Mapping for Battlefield Casualty Care

Keywords: 3D mapping, infrared imaging, threat detection, victim monitoring, triage

Context and motivation

On the battlefield, injured soldiers can face significant delays in medical treatment or evacuation due to ongoing hostilities and treacherous terrain. Traditional methods of casualty care rely on limited information and may put medics at unnecessary risk: medics often lack a comprehensive picture of the battlefield, hindering their ability to locate and prioritise casualties while minimising exposure to threats.

TaMaCare emerges from this critical observation, aiming to revolutionise battlefield casualty care by creating a real-time digital twin of the frontline. More precisely, we aim to improve response times and decision-making in critical situations. The proposed digital twin aims to provide medics with a clear view of the battlefield, encompassing the location of injured soldiers, their vital signs, and any structures or potential dangers present in the vicinity.

Figure 1: Illustration of the proposed digital twin visualization

Objectives

TaMaCare focuses on situations where immediate evacuation is not feasible. The project’s scope encompasses the development and integration of the following key functionalities within the digital twin:

• 3D Mapping: Creating a highly accurate and detailed 3D representation of the battlefield environment, including buildings, roads, and other relevant features.
• Casualty and Threat Detection: Automatically identifying and locating injured soldiers and potential threats (explosive devices) through a combination of visible and infrared camera systems
• Real-Time Localization and Health Monitoring: Establishing a network of Ultra-Wideband (UWB) anchors and tags to track the location of casualties in real-time and simulate a health monitoring system (e.g., by generating temperature and heart rate values associated with each patient’s localization tracker, which in this project will be simulated). With this data, the command post will have an annotated overview of the front-line, with the necessary situational awareness to plan and assess the intervention of the medics

Project team

Consortium

Royal Military Academy

Coordinator

Ghent University

Partner

Pozyx

Partner

Members

Output

The project has not officially started yet. We will update this page later.