On-demand, Controller-based Simulation for Human-Automation Training

Human control and interaction with synthetic agents and environments has tremendous potential application in intelligent tutoring, performance analysis, human factors analysis, and distributed training. To date, this application has been limited by the cost of creating and maintaining simulations. Vcom3D has developed Authoring Tools and a Web-enabled Simulation Engine that allow subject matter experts to efficiently and economically create training simulations that embed realistic, communicating ?virtual humans? in Advanced Distrbuted Learning (ADL) conformant, web-based training courses. This software has been used to create courses for job interview skills, law-enforcement, and military operations training; as well as over 30,000 copies of language skills training software. To date, however, the tools have not been applied to training human-automation interactions. For this Phase I SBIR, we will extend our Vcommunicator? authoring tools and Extensible 3D (X3D) simulation engine to create high-performance human-automation training simulations. Key products of this project will include a new Controller-Based architecture that extends the Model-based design, as well as definition of the Controller architecture in terms of relevant industry standards. The goal is to enable cost-effective, reusable, human-automation training available over the web. For Phase II, we will develop a full prototype system and exemplar course.