The U.S. Army Research Laboratory (ARL) has launched a virtual testing ground that supports simultaneous experimentation of emerging technologies across different sites in the U.S.
The facility provides an architecture where personnel can connect to highly distributed testbeds, shortening the duration a research innovation leaves the laboratory for an experiment field from weeks to hours, the Army said Thursday.
The testing ground, a part of ARL's Internet of Battlefield Things Collaborative Research Alliance (IoBT CRA), enables researchers to perform collecting sensing experimentation and other study efforts in a virtual common operating environment without spending money on converged field experiments.
"[It] delivers immediate capabilities to provide a means to stimulate basic research collaborations; reduces the time and cost for integrated distributed experimentation; and gives focus to research artifacts, allowing concepts to become tangible," explained Stephen Russell, manager of IoBT CRA.
To demonstrate the facility's use, Army researchers recently teamed up with counterparts from the Naval Research Laboratory and NATO and connected innovations in various fields together despite their separate geographical locations.