Russian developers have created the Viarus simulator to train drone operators with the help of VR glasses, Mikhail Sinakin, executive director of the Iksarus company, said in an interview with Sputnik.
He noted that “wearing the Viarus VR spectacles, a pilot steers the virtual drone in the same way as if he operates a real unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV).”
The press service of the Russian non-commercial organization National Technology Initiative, for its part, told Sputnik that the VR glasses’ characteristics are almost the same as those of the first person view (FPV) spectacles used to take control of the UAVs.
According to the press service, the developers plan to create another drone control simulator to help pilots drill various scenarios for using UAVs in combat missions.
This comes a few weeks after the Russian company Svyaz-Spetszashchita (Communication-Special Protection) announced it had developed a new drone that can be powered both by batteries and gasoline.
The firm’s marketing head Dmitry Zubarev told Sputnik that the UAV is capable of transporting two smaller attack drones, which he described as a “highly-desired feature nowadays."
“When spotting ‘an object of interest’, the UAV sends a smaller drone to the area where the object was tracked and returns to the base,” Zubarev said, adding that the vehicle is equipped with a neural network-based object identification system.
Various attack drones, such as the Lancet UAV, are now widely used by the Russian Armed Forces in the special military operation zone in Ukraine.
These drones added significantly to tackling Kiev’s counteroffensive, which has claimed the lives of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers since its beginning on June 4. Russian President Vladimir Putin stressed that the counteroffensive has made no progress since then, calling it a failure rather than a stalemate.