Synthetic Language Interface Toolkit for Chat (SynChat)

ABSTRACT: The high operations tempo, frequent deployments and other fact-of-life events limit the availability for team training. To mitigate this training availability problem, training simulations need to incorporate constructive entities as teammates in a way that enhances training for the human participants. In modern operational environments text messaging communications are increasingly common. To be effective, synthetic teammates will need to be capable of text messaging with their human teammates. To address the limitations of the language understanding technologies, the Air Force has conducted research and development in natural language understanding capabilities in its synthetic teammate program. Our team proposes to design and develop a natural language interface toolkit, SynChat, that will leverage prior Air Force investments and will develop and integrate other needed technologies. We see a significant opportunity to advance the state of the art in the integration and application of text-based communications for command and control training environments. Much of the challenge of integrating language capabilities into new domains in training systems is both the development of domain specific knowledge that is usable by the constructive entities and extending domain general reasoning capabilities for the new domain. Our solution focuses on these key challenges. BENEFIT: With the SynChat natural language toolkit, the U.S. Air Force will have the capability to develop and integrate natural language capabilities into training systems in a way that will be more affordable than today"s development methods. More affordable development will permit the Air Force to apply these capabilities across a broader set of operational domains and allow more of our warfighters to benefit from these new training capabilities. The broader application of language capable constructive models will help address the training availability problem and will improve mission and combat readiness. The SynChat natural language toolkit will provide similar efficiency improvements for Army, Navy, Marine, and other non-Department of Defense government agencies.