Formalized Behaviors for Modeling Individual Combatant Weapon Firing in Military Operations in Urban Terrain (MOUT)

The ultimate goal is to augment the behavioral models of automated individual combatants with a realistic and carefully validated set of weapon firing behaviors for virtual MOUT training environments. These behaviors will represent a formalization of target acquisition and firing execution tactics and techniques, based on doctrine and input from subject matter experts. In order to go from formalization to executable behaviors, we will use our SimBionic toolkit, which allows for rapid visual behavior development, testing and modification, easy simulation integration, and flexible architectures. The behaviors will be designed for hierarchical execution, so that the actions and goals of a human combatant can be modeled with priorities reflected in the level of the call stack at which a given execution condition or simulation state is evaluated. The execution architecture will support a multi-module model in which the weapon firing algorithm can be easily coordinated with navigation and other control modules. The Phase I effort will include the specification of validation methods for the resulting algorithm, thereby providing a foundation for detailed validation and refinement in Phase II. Future work will also be supported by the development of an abstracted methodology for the process from knowledge engineering to formalization and implementation. The formalized weapon firing algorithm will have direct use potential for training purposes in various branches of the military, as well as for law enforcement, security, and other organizations where trainees seek to gain experience facing potentially dangerous or lethal individual threats in complex or urban terrain. Additionally, our underlying behavior authoring technology has a wide potential application area in both the military and the computer game industry for developing many forms of intelligent autonomous behavior, both for simulations and for concrete applications like robotic vehicles.