The Defence and Security Accelerator (DASA) has launched a new innovation focus area on human augmentation (HA).
The agency within the Ministry of Defence has opened a competition for proposals to win funding of up to £70,000 to develop proof of concepts over a period of six months.
The exercise is being run on behalf of the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl) HA Science and Technology project.
DASA described HA as the use of tech to temporarily or permanently modify human performance, saying this could help defence and security personnel respond to new operational demands.
Examples of candidate HA technologies include wearable assistive devices such as exoskeletons, sensory enhancement technology, robotics, artificial intelligence and implantable devices.
“It is vital to explore if human augmentation technologies can be harnessed safely, legally and ethically to develop enhanced levels of operator (and system) performance in military and security capability,” DASA said.
