Northrop Grumman building better binoculars | Maryland Gazette (HometownGlenBurnie.com)

"The idea is to capture the very quick response you get in the brain," said Jan Walker, public affairs officer for the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. "It would allow the warfighter more time to react to threats."

Northrop Grumman was awarded a $6.7 million contract to develop the binoculars.

DARPA awarded the contract to the Linthicum defense firm in March to develop a non-invasive brain measurement technique that would allow the binoculars to alert military personnel on the battlefield when their brains detect a far-away threat.

The aim is for the binoculars to have a probability of greater than 98 percent for target detection and a false alarm rate less than 10 percent for a 120-degree field of vision in a variety of environments, said Michael House, program director for Northrop Grumman.

"A 120-degree field of vision is pretty large," he said. "It kind of mimics your own eyeball."

The percentages would be measured against pedestrians at .62 mile, or 1 kilometer away, stationary vehicles at 3.1 miles and moving vehicles at 6.2 miles, Mr. House said.

"The goal is to put the human mind into the loop," he said. "It's a blending of digital and biological computing."

Electrodes and infrared light are non-invasive ways to measure brain waves that may be used, Mr. House said. Research will determine the appropriate brain wave measurement tool.

Northrop Grumman started research in March as the first of three phases in the project. The $6.7 million contract was for phase one. The goal of the phase, expected to last one year, is to develop the concept of the binoculars, at which point DARPA will tell Northrop Grumman whether to advance to phase two or to abandon the project. California-based HRL Laboratories was awarded a $4.3 million contact as well for phase one. The contracts are for different amounts because DARPA determines the funding based on the approach the companies take.

If the program succeeds, it will run through 2011, Ms. Walker said. DARPA anticipates extended field testing.

"By the end of the program, if all goes as planned, we will have prototype systems that will have been field tested," she said. The military services will then decide how to implement the binoculars into their own equipment, she said, which would take five or more years after the prototypes are made.

Because the research and development are in the early stages, Mr. House and Ms. Walker could not explain what the binoculars might look like or what kind of technology would be used in the making them.

"The idea is that the human brain is much better at scanning a field of view and finding something of interest than any of our computers are," Ms. Walker said. "What we want to do is take advantage of the visual processing abilities of the brain."