An Integrated Immersive Simulator for the Dismounted Soldier

I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand. Confucius 1. SUMMARY Vision. Just as flight simulators enable pilots to safely practice responses to emergencies, the challenge now is to develop virtual environment technology for the training together of small teams on foot-military squads, Coast Guard boarding parties, police, EMTs, emergency room trauma teams, hazmat teams, etc. Such training allows repeated, varied practice. The goal is you are there; you learn by doing with feedback; you jell as a team by doing together. First, we must clearly envision what is wanted. This we will call the Immersive Team Trainer (ITT).

2002

: Over the past decade, Virtual Environment (VE)-based training systems have become commonplace within the military training domain. These systems offer such benefits as small footprint, rapid reconfiguration, and enhanced training delivery. In addition, they appear to offer significant relief for a market starved for low cost training systems, and hold great potential as effective training tools. Yet, all too often the human element is taken for granted, with systems being designed to incorporate the latest technological advances, rather than focusing on enhancing the user's experience within the VE-both from a training and human factors perspective. It is precisely this shift in design philosophy, from techno centric to human centric that represents the next, greatest, challenge to developing effective VE-based training systems. Interaction with VE involves the ability of individuals to effectively perform essential perceptualsensory- motor tasks within the virtual world. More...

The purpose of embedded training (ET) is to make use of operational equipment so that operators can train effectively. The implementation of ET requires fundamental capabilities, including the presentation of scenarios, operator inputs, performance assessment, and feedback (Morrison & Orlansky, 1977). Embedded Virtual Simulation (EVS) is the name given to the technologies that allow an operator to sense and interact with the operational equipment and a virtual environment (VE) that is different from the real one in which the operator is physically present. The VE could be a three-dimensional computer-generated environment or it could consist of both computer-generated and real components within or outside the operational equipment. For example, a tank gunner could look through his real sight and see computer-generated targets superimposed on the local landscape. This combination of real and synthetic imagery is called augmented or mixed reality. The human interface to EVS systems co...

2008

Just as flight simulators enable pilots to safely practice responses to emergencies, we propose an integrated research program to develop virtual environment technology for the scenario-based training of small teams of emergency responders on foot—police, EMSs, hazmat teams, Coast Guard, military, etc. Such training allows repeated, varied practice of even rare scenarios. For two years, we have studied this problem while preparing a grant proposal. Here we detail the component visions, the challenges of each, and some approaches. We envision a novel physical facility in which small teams can train together in a large immersive virtual environment (VE) that visually and acoustically adapts as team members interact with each other and with autonomous agents. The large simulation area and new tracking, rendering, and display technology will enable: natural walking movements during training; inclusion of real props; and, crucially, training of teams instead of individuals. New team-trai...

The DoD and NASA are considering virtual environments (VE) technology for use in forward deployable and remote training devices. Yet, many of these VE devices, particularly those which employ helmet-mounted displays, have an adverse effect on users, eliciting motion sickness and other sequelae (e.g., Pausch, Crca, & Conway, 1992; Kennedy, Lane, Lilienthal, Berbaum, & Hettinger, 1992). These symptoms, now called cybersickness (McCauley & Sharkey, 1992), could retard development of VE technology and limit its use as a training tool.

Presence: Teleoperators & Virtual Environments, 1994

This paper presents a laboratory review of current research being undertaken at Sandia National Laboratories in the development of a distributed virtual reality simulation system for situational training applications. An overview of the project is presented, followed by a discussion of the various components, both hardware and software. Finally, a training application being developed utilizing the system is presented. a review of this research, including a discussion of the system components, the configuration, and an application-specific training environment being developed within the context of this larger work. Related work includes SIMNET (Pope, 1989) and NPSNET (Zyda, Pratt, Falby, Lombardo, & Kelleher, 1994), both of which are distributed, heterogeneous simulation systems for battlefield training, the latter with embedded hypermedia. To our knowledge, neither handles close quarters training with full-body rendering of human participants. I

2005

Just as flight simulators enable pilots to safely practice responses to emergencies, we propose an integrated research program to develop virtual environment technology for the scenario-based training of small teams of emergency responders on foot-police, EMSs, hazmat teams, Coast Guard, military, etc. Such training allows repeated, varied practice of even rare scenarios. For two years, we have studied this problem while preparing a grant proposal. Here we detail the component visions, the challenges of each, and some approaches. We envision a novel physical facility in which small teams can train together in a large immersive virtual environment (VE) that visually and acoustically adapts as team members interact with each other and with autonomous agents. The large simulation area and new tracking, rendering, and display technology will enable: natural walking movements during training; inclusion of real props; and, crucially, training of teams instead of individuals. New team-training pedagogy and new rapid modeling and scenario generation tools will support the training. The goal is: You are there; You learn by doing, with feedback; You jell as a team by doing together.

2004

Nothing replaces the importance of the sweat, blood and tears of a live simulated training experience in which all your senses (visual, audio, haptic, olfactory, gastronomy, etc.) play into a physical, mental and emotional life-anddeath scenario in a fully three dimensional, real-time world. When Virtual Reality is provided as an alternative, it can pale in comparison, as it is a disembodied experience no matter how much artistry has been applied to the aesthetic display and emotional thrill. This statement is applicable even to military simulations that drive complex and intricate training, and yet rarely cause trainees to break a sweat. There is a need for systems that integrate training scenarios into physically responsive live environments, enhanced by compelling entertainment techniques. Such systems must support the delivery of a wide range of simulation applications including vehicular, dismounted and constructive simulation planning. This paper covers recent developments in integrating multi-modal functionality into Mixed Reality (MR), the blending of real and virtual sight, sound and special effects. More specifically, we present an overview of an MR research project and the multi-modal training engine (versus game engine) produced as a consequence of this research. This engine composes real and synthetic sensory stimulations into an interactive, multi-sensory, non-linear, immersive experience. One application of this MR system is to create a MOUT (Military Operations in Urban Terrain) environment that blends real assets, such as buildings or building facades, with virtual assets including neutrals and combatants, both friends and foes. The entire system (software and hardware) is designed to be deployed into the field to transform any site into a MOUT for use in military training, homeland security, emergency response, informal education and entertainment. It can adapt core content experiences to custom environments providing in-the-field lush, compellingly, interactive and non-linear group experiences.

2001

This work is focused on the implementation and integration of virtual environment (VE) technology to support the future Human Mars Mission (HMM) personal training conducted by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). We present a six degrees of freedom (DOF) motion platform, or Flostation, plus a head mounted display (HMD) based virtual environment training system, where the motion platform is used to simulate rover movement and the HMD coupled with a head tracker and a joystick to support interaction. This research demonstrates that we can achieve not only real-time interaction performance but also high level realism in our virtual environment application. The prototype system was developed on an SGI Onyx equipped with an InfiniteReality II, a two pipe graphics system.

IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, 2016

A major training device used to train all Landing Signal Officers (LSOs) for several decades has been the Landing Signal Officer Trainer, Device 2H111. This simulator, located in Oceana, VA, is contained within a two story tall room; it consists of several large screens and a physical rendition of the actual instruments used by LSOs in their operational environment. The young officers who serve in this specialty will typically encounter this system for only a short period of formal instruction (six one-hour long sessions), leaving multiple gaps in training. While experience with 2H111 is extremely valuable for all LSO officers, the amount of time they can spend using this training device is undeniably too short. The need to provide LSOs with an unlimited number of training opportunities unrestricted by location and time, married with recent advancements in commercial off the shelf (COTS) immersive technologies, provided an ideal platform to create a lightweight training solution that would fill those gaps and extend beyond the capabilities currently offered in the 2H111 simulator. This paper details our efforts on task analysis, surveying of user domain, mapping of 2H111 training capabilities to new prototype system to ensure its support of major training objectives of 2H111, design and development of prototype training system, and a feasibility study that included tests of technical system performance and informal testing with trainees at the LSO Schoolhouse. The results achieved in this effort indicate that the time for LSO training to make the leap to immersive VR has decidedly come.