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Intelligent Tutor Added to BC2010 Simulation via HLA Interface

Customer U.S. Army
Users Battalion command students and their instructors
Need

Battle Command 2010 (BC2010) is a tactical decision game developed by MÄK Technologies, which is used by Command Prep Course students at the Command General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth to play battalion level tactical scenarios in a dynamic, 3-D environment. In the training setting, the simulation previously required the effort of an instructor to observe the student's actions and provide after action reviews (AAR). The addition of an Intelligent Tutoring System (ITS) to BC2010 off-loads the instructor from some of these duties and allows the students to execute scenarios without requiring an instructor for the AAR.

Solution

Stottler Henke developed an intelligent tutoring system (ITS) that is interfaced to BC2010 via the High Level Architecture (HLA). In BC2010, students playing a scenario receive an initial briefing with the mission objectives and five paragraph order, and then issue plans for each unit under their control. During the simulation the students can monitor the execution of their plans in the free-play simulation environment and issue real-time commands in response to the flow of events.

Before simulation execution begins, the student's plans are initially transmitted from BC2010 to the ITS through HLA. These plans are critiqued by the ITS using a variety of tactical concept metrics provided by a subject matter expert. The student receives this feedback and makes any elective corrections to the plans, optionally repeating the initial critique step as desired. Execution then begins. During execution, BC2010 publishes the locations and actions of vehicles to the ITS via HLA messages. The ITS performs real-time evaluation on the evolving battle state, determining which tactical principles the student has correctly applied and which have been missed. At the conclusion of the scenario, the ITS automatically assembles a debriefing from the accumulated real-time assessment.
Status The BC2010 ITS was delivered to the U.S. Army in October 2002. It represents a leave-behind demonstration unit that can train tactical decision-making without the aid of an instructor. Possible future extensions for the system include further development with additional training scenarios for automated instructional remediation, expansion of the interface object model used by the simulation and the ITS for higher fidelity performance assessment, and integration with a broader set of tactical principles applicable to tank battalion command.
Related
Applications		 BC2010 ITS represents the first integration of an ITS with an existing simulation, using strictly the HLA protocol. This opens up a wide range of potential future application areas, where existing standards-based simulations that use the HLA protocol to publish simulation data and states can be leveraged for training purposes by interfacing to an intelligent trainer.
Additional
information

Screenshot of BC2010, developed by MAK Technologies

Video demonstration:

BC2010: Windows Media Video (WMV) 16MB
BC2010: AVI with TSCC codec 16MB

I/ITSEC 2002 conference paper:
Adding an Intelligent Tutoring System to an Existing Training Simulation



Copyright © 2002 Stottler Henke Associates, Inc. All rights reserved.