The Future Combat System (FCS) warfighter manning a Command and Control Vehicle (C2V) crewstation must remotely control robotic platforms to perform reconnaissance and engage the enemy. The operator must maintain situational awareness and apply tactical decision-making principles in a heightened information-rich setting with distributed vehicles and sensors under his command. FCS has identified training to be a Key Performance Parameter (KPP), with the objective of a fully embedded approach, making the system operations and training modes interchangeable. Since the training facilities of the present will be replaced by troops training in motor pools and doing mission rehearsal in assembly areas, the need to provide robust training packages becomes much more important. Performing exercises in an embedded ITS can greatly enhance and standardize training, making it available anywhere a unit is deployed. The automated evaluation capabilities of an ITS are well suited to the embedded setting where human instructors are typically not available for guidance.

Stottler Henke developed a proof-of-concept ITS to provide scenario-based practice for the FCS soldier. The ITS is integrated with an FCS Embedded Combined Arms Team Training / Mission Rehearsal (ECATT/MR) Testbed, configured to represent an FCS C2V. The Testbed includes the OneSAF Testbed Baseline (OTB) simulation component as the driver for computer generated forces, integrated with a control interface for networked robotic vehicles under the student's command, as well as a variety of visualization and situational awareness interface tools. The ITS is tightly integrated with the simulation and control elements of the Testbed, not only to monitor events as they occur during an exercise, but also to publish messages which the Testbed uses to display feedback in its native user interface during execution. The ITS observes the student's actions and performance in a simulated scenario and produces specifically tailored feedback on principles the student has executed correctly and incorrectly. In addition to the fundamental tactical principles, students are also monitored in the task of translating tactical intentions to robotic commands correctly executed in the control interface. The automated evaluation mechanisms are also partly applied in driving the behaviors of simulated opposing forces in the simulation, in order to make the scenarios more realistic.

Video demonstration:

I/ITSEC 2005 conference paper:
FCS Intelligent Structured Training - Experimental Results and Future Applications

I/ITSEC 2003 conference paper:
Embedded Training Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITS) for the Future Combat Systems (FCS) Command and Control (C2) Vehicle

I/ITSEC 2002 conference paper:
An Embedded Training Solution: FBCB2/Tactical Decision-Making Tutoring System