Immersive Persistent World for Adaptive Cultural Training (IMPACT)

The changing landscape of modern warfare has put a premium on individuals and small teams, operating independently, to function efficiently in settings that require cultural awareness. Without proper training, unit tactical effectiveness and resulting mission operational effectiveness weaken. Simulation-based training using virtual environments is rapidly becoming a key enabling technology within the defense community for warfighters to practice language and cultural skills. However, current cultural trainers are limited in several critical areas: failing to incorporate contextual models of the population, serving isolated interactions that do not persist, expensive to construct and slow to adapt, and lacking a tailored training capability. To enrich cultural training with an adaptive virtual environment, we propose to design and demonstrate the feasibility of tools for an IMmersive Persistent world for Adaptive Cultural Training (IMPACT). IMPACT provides tools for adaptive cultural training of warfighters, embedding trainees in a persistent virtual environment filled with adaptive characters modeled at various levels of resolution and dynamically adjusting difficulty based on neurocognitive measures. Our approach builds on our existing cultural training tools, already demonstrated in high-profile events, adding an adaptive capability based on social science theories to allow trainees to see the impact of their actions on the local populace.