Training with maximum impact

Our leading-edge biomechanical engineers are partnering with industry to enhance training outcomes for Australia’s armed forces.

Military personnel put themselves in harm’s way on a daily basis to serve the interests of Australia. It is crucial that their training preparation is as close to the ‘real thing’ as possible – their life depends on it.

Chiron Global Technologies (CGT) has developed a sophisticated highly protective armour system that allows soldiers in training to engage in realistic, ‘full-force’ , close quarters fighting (CQF) simulations. The current generation armour provides high levels of protection with minimised impact on physical performance. CGT’s next stage of development, however, involves embedding advanced sensor technology into the suit to quantify performance during CQF training. This will be achieved through correlation of detected physical blows to accurate models of injury prediction. Our pioneering high-tech body armour will enable a step change enhancement in current CQC training programs and promises to have a direct impact on the success of military operations by allowing personnel to train as they would be required to act when under lethal risk. We expect that full realisation of our vision for the suit will have impact beyond Defence and into law-enforcement, security and the corrections sector says CGT Co-Founder and Chairman Mr David Pysden.

Recently acquired seed funding provided by the Defence Science Institute (DSI) now enables CGT to address planned suit enhancements through partnership with the Melbourne School of Engineering’s advanced Biomechanics Laboratory at the University of Melbourne.

The first steps are to assess the physical ergonomics of the current Chiron prototype and to generate a test methodology that will allow us to compare and contrast results with future iterative design changes says lead University of Melbourne researcher Professor Peter Lee. We are set-up to address such work through the use of our unique, in-country Computer Assisted Rehabilitation ENvironment (CAREN) and through our long history of delivering Defence-oriented human performance research .

The test methodology, developed under the DSI funded program, will look to probe the physical performance trade-off imposed as a result of wearing the armoured suit. It will also look for indicators of amplified injury risk and track how the body compensates for the increased burden (changes to physical movement). Having a ground truth understanding of the suit as it stands today will be the key to unlocking improved design and performance tomorrow. We have also developed accurate models of physical injury prediction in past programs and therefore hope that we can also provide engineering support for the realisation of the quantitative sensored suit concept says Professor Lee. We believe that our test methodologies, our Defence-centric understanding and our ability to consult on iterative design enhancements will be valuable to CGT in its pursuit of revolutionising the Defence and civilian law enforcement training landscape .