Assessing Decision-Making Skills in Virtual Environments

"The Military Operations in Urban Terrain (MOUT) Advanced Concept Technology Demonstration (ACTD) is an ongoing program of applied experimentation in the Army and Marine Corps that seeks to identify and evaluate the ability of off-the-shelf technologies tomeet specific needs associated with urban military operations.Members of small dismounted infantry units will face growing responsibilities and increasing challenges in combined arms combat and in contingency operations on the digitized battlefield of the future. Training for MOUT is limited by time, cost, and safetyfactors. Virtual Environment technologies have the potential to provide the Army with a supplemental training capability to meet these new demands.In the SBIR Phase I Virtual Soldier Skills Assessment (ViSSA) Project, ScenPro, Inc. performed research for the development of an automated training assessment and after action review support tool to assist trainers in preparing dismounted forces forSpecial Operations, Stability and Support Operations, and Contingency Operations using virtual urban environments. The system tracks mission-related factors linked to soldier decisions, movements, fire, radio traffic, and contact with virtual entities andtrigger lines under an intricate web of overlays designed to capture and store these specific pieces of data during a virtual training exercise.The information assists the trainer in conducting an effective After Action Review by pr