The United States Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) is seeking new augmented reality (AR) tools to conduct inspections across the US-Mexico border and aims to secure a vendor with a public proposal.
The DEA hopes to incorporate AR-powered aerial photography with a proposed ‘Augmented Reality Mapping System’ (ARS), which will provide high quality aerial scans of the border spanning roughly 3,145 kilometres and will enhance them with AR technology.
In the official proposal, the DEA outlined how observation and surveillance will “support ground-based enforcement personnel with recorded video evidence,” allowing officers to view aerial videography with AR overlays of street names, addresses, parcel data, business names, and landmarks of importance.
Despite this, the DEA has yet to find an AR vendor to supply the required technologies, prompting the online proposal on the US Government’s website.
The Future of XR in US Congress
The proposal comes as Congress evaluates the inclusion of extended technologies (XR) in national budgets, with groups such as the Washington-based XR Association (XRA) playing a massive role.
The XRA has been lobbying lawmakers to include XR technologies in the US Innovation and Competition Act (USICA), a massive 10-point bill aimed at building US tech independence.
In an interview with XR Today, Joan O’Hara, Vice President of Public Policy at the XRA, outlined the importance of US government agencies like the DEA adopting XR technology, stating:
“It’s really important that lawmakers are thinking ahead and making sure that we’re supporting that technology, and then, five years from now, not caught off guard and say, ‘Oh, my gosh, this is huge. This is impacting everything! How come we haven’t been investing in this technology?'”
The developments come as the US military has been experimenting with XR tools over the past year, and companies like Moth+Flame have had great success in deploying VR training modules to tackle a rise in sexual assault cases in the US Air Force.
Numerous US government bureaus have teamed up with institutions such as Ohio and Ken State University to research and develop immersive trainers for first responders and small military units.
