BBN Technologies

A Systematic Analysis

This BBN effort seeks to determine the applicability of the behavior-authoring techniques of commercial computer games to military training simulations. It is sponsored by the U.S. Navy Office of Naval Research (ONR).

Specifically, this project seeks to:

• Survey and evaluate the capabilities and insights provided by the gaming industry in accordance with their utility for military applications.
• Facilitate collaboration between behavior modelers and game developers that will lead to a revolutionary advance in modeling capabilities.
• Develop a proof-of-concept behavior modeling tool derived from game techniques and technology.

Sample Areas of Study

Among its objectives, this project seeks to determine the "authorability" of commercial games and the potential for using them in training by examining the state-of-the-art in the following areas:

• Synthetic Characters ("Bots")
• Modifiable Behaviors
• Application-Programmer Interfaces
• Other Authoring Tools
• Enhancements

The Problem

Developing Human Behavior Models (HBMs) for Military Training Simulations is Difficult and Costly - Developing HBMs is difficult, costly, and requires a high level of expertise.

HBMs Lack Generality - The military has many uses for human behavior models, each with its own requirements.

Budgets Are Limited - Military budgets have many important priorities today.

The Opportunity

Advances in Commercial Games - Today's commercial games have capabilities that outstrip the massive military simulations of just a few years ago. The ability of commercial games to simulate real-life behavior has become sufficient to enable high-quality training.

Low-cost Applications - Networked, multi-player training simulations can be established for nominal cost by adapting commercial games.

Background

Commercial game developers have some of the same goals for the simulation of human behaviors as do the developers of military training applications, such as the need to create an immersive simulated world and to simulate human behavior. As advanced, high-resolution graphics become commonplace, game developers are increasingly relying on the quality of their "game AI" (i.e., behaviors of synthetic entities) to distinguish their game from competitors. At the same time, game developers have become increasingly concerned with producing realistic and robust behaviors.

Game developers are interested in producing entities that are more adaptive to new situations, harder to game, less predictable, and more variable. Currently, the gaming community uses synthetic entities to play a range of roles and makes use of well-crafted scenarios to focus the user experience and highlight appropriate behavioral capabilities while downplaying behavioral imperfections and inadequacies. These needs and intentions for the development of behaviors in synthetic entities are shared with the training community.