Fully Rugged Mobile PCs Provide an Edge on the Battlefield and Beyond

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) pioneered satellites, the internet, drones, and human-computer interfaces. Now that work is enabling the next round of revolutionary technologies, including artificial intelligence (AI), edge and cloud computing, and the Internet of Military Things (IoMT) for a wide variety of Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (C4ISR) applications.

Laptops and tablets are beneficiaries of yesterday's DARPA breakthroughs as well as enablers of today's and tomorrow's innovations. For example, ruggedized mobile PCs provide powerful new tools for asymmetric warfare by giving soldiers anytime, anywhere access to biometric information such as fingerprints and facial recognition. That information enables them to quickly determine whether a person in street clothes at a checkpoint is a civilian or combatant. This application also highlights the fundamental role of edge computing and the cloud for securely storing and sharing that biometric information.