TOPCRUE: Team Observational Profiling and Cue Recognition for Understanding the Environment

Marines in the field rely heavily on their ability to survey the human landscape for potential insurgents and other individuals of interest. To support this activity, the Marines"Combat Hunter program trains"profiling,"a set of skills used by military and civilian experts to read people and their interactions in complex environments. However, the Combat Hunter program has several critical limitations; it lacks throughput capacity, performance measures, and formalized team training capabilities. Aptima proposes to develop the capability to address these limitations. The Team Observational Profiling and Cue Recognition for Understanding the Environment (TOPCRUE) system will be a multi-media software system that provides Marines with training in team profiling and cue recognition (PCR). TOPCRUE will collect team performance data to diagnose skill deficiencies, provide diagnostic feedback for improving performance, and facilitate evaluations by the squad leader. These capabilities will support pre-training preparation, training evaluation, and proposed scientific research to better define the PCR skills involved in effective team profiling. In Phase I, we focus on addressing several key enablers needed for system development, including development of training requirements, performance measure development, acquisition of domain related content, and development of methods and technologies for optimizing team PCR training.