Overview
ASCE
CLAS
Leaders
ELECT
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Overview
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Homunculus is a both an architecture and
an implemented framework designed and
constructed to provide an environment
that aids and assists in the production
of distributed simulation and
visualization applications. The primary
goal of the tools provided in the
reference distribution, is to form a
basis for researchers to experiment with
new ways of creating distributed
simulations and resulting visualizations
of those simulations. Homunculus
consists of a number of subcomponents
that each targets a different domain
within simulation and visualization.
First of all a system component
abstracts many operating system
dependent functionality. Second a data
component creates a programming
abstraction, allowing developers to work
with data in a homogeneous way across
platforms. This second component forms
the foundation of the distributed data
mechanism embedded in the third
component known as pervade. Pervade is
the network abstraction that forms the
core mechanism by which simulations and
visualizations can be distributed across
the network. The fourth component is a
scientific module, which supports a
number of widely used algorithms used in
the artificial intelligence and language
understanding community. Currently this
component focuses mainly on text
processing. The fifth component
encapsulates the visual part of the
toolkit and is known as Lumina. This
part can assist developers in creating
operating system independent
2-dimensional and 3-dimensional graphics
that can be linked together using the
Pervade networking component.
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Homunculus powered simulations
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Homunculus
has been used in a number of simulation
and training systems. In each case
Homunculus provided the foundation
software to rapidly create the first
prototypes. Due to the pervasive design
patterns in the framework, applications
built using it can easily transition new
capabilities back into the toolkit.
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Spatial Cognition (ASCE)
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The Spatial Cognition project develops spatial perception abilities for virtual characters. Virtual characters, like humans, exist in an environment of tremendous complexity, especially with the rapid growth of rendering and modeling capabilities. Humans manage their environmental complexity through a number of cognitive mechanisms, whereas their counterparts in virtual space are only beginning to come to terms with their polygons. This project seeks to test and explore the abilities of virtual characters within a unified sensory model and environment called the Agent Spatial Cognition Environment (ASCE).
Using the Agent Spatial Cognition Environment, the project team will be able to enhance the realism of the virtual characters by limiting their sensory perception, using the same types of limits that real humans have. As a result, the virtual characters will have more believable behaviors, dialog, and gaze control. With fewer perceptual input requirements, the quantity of dynamically processed sensory data is controlled, freeing up processing for other aspects of the virtual human.
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| A demonstration of volumetric perception. The solid cubes are perceived by the agent |
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A demonstration of agent perception. Whilst scanning the environment the agent is asked to indicate what is being observed. |
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CLAS/AXL
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The Army Excellence in Leadership (AXL) project develops case studies and interactive training technologies to support the acquisition of leadership skills. The project is a collaboration with the Army Research Institute (ARI) Leader Development Research Unit. AXL leverages the best practices of case-method teaching and Hollywood storytelling techniques to create fictional case studies that address specific leadership issues. The first case, “Power Hungry,” is a thirteen-minute film about a food distribution operation in Afghanistan. Currently under development is “Trip Wire,” a case that considers the leadership challenges posed by the threat of IEDs in Iraq.
AXL will be available through two media: online, through a Web-based, interactive application, and as a DVD-based solution. The online system will provide a dynamic and interactive experience. The AXL team is developing an authorable, instructional design to track and control the student’s learning experience as they explore the case. Using ICT Natural Language Understanding research, students are also able to interview characters from the cases through free-text questions. These interviews give the students the opportunity to “think like a commander” as they gather information about the case.
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Leaders
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As the first project to use the Narratoria authoring tools, the Leaders project applied branching storylines
and state-of the art text classification technologies to present an engaging interactive training simulation.
We will briefly present some background information on the project but for more information please visit the
Narratoria website.
The Story Representation and Management project develops technologies, applications, and languages for collecting, retrieving, and analyzing stories told by US Army soldiers about real-life experiences. The current research focuses on the following areas:
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Automated story collection—Technologies for automatically recognizing when people are telling stories of their experiences in oral conversations and written text using automated speech recognition and statistical text classification methods
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Story retrieval interfaces—Web-based applications to enable training developers to search story repositories and the Web for stories that relate to the specific activities of their target training applications
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Formal representation languages—Large-scale knowledge representations (first-order predicate calculus theories) for expressing the situations and points articulated in stories, with a particular emphasis on vocabularies of commonsense psychology
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| Intro to the Leaders Interactive Narrative based Training Simulation |
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A screenshot of the Narratoria application showing the branching storyline editor |
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ELECT
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The Enhanced Learning Environments with Creative Technologies (ELECT) project develops tools for rapidly integrating operational lessons learned into field training applications. In the PC-based, bilateral contact training module, trainees act as US Army leaders tasked to plan and conduct a series of bi-lateral meetings. The meetings teach trainees how to make contact with public or religious officials and to discuss local concerns, such as the status of water or electrical power for an area. The trainees interact with virtual components to create compelling and immersive bilateral training environments.
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