US Army Creates Virtual Reality Dome To Assess Soldier Thinking During Combat 35
HughPickens.com writes: Bryant Jordan reports at Defense Tech that the Cognitive Science and Applications Team at the US Army's Natick Soldier Research, Development and Engineering Center is creating a computer-generated reality "dome" to immerse warfighters in a virtual environment that not only tests their skills, but allows Army researchers to assess soldier cognitive abilities and study the impact of real-world operational situations on decision-making, spatial memory and wayfinding. The dome is a concave virtual-reality system that provides a full 180-degree horizontal field, using high-density, front-projection to create a high-resolution, visual world where the simulations will be modeled on real-world locations. "The integration of multiple input modalities, along with multisensory feedback, increases the realism, immersion and engagement on behalf of users subjected to prolonged, workload-intensive activities," says Dr. Caroline Mahoney. "These novel integrations provide unprecedented opportunities to monitor and optimize human behavior during real-world task execution, and to evaluate and predict the impact of innovative human-systems technologies on operational performance." In the virtual dome, users can interact and alter the environment through hand-held and weapon-based devices, which control movement, orientation and weapon aiming. Future additions to the dome will include whole-body motion tracking, low-frequency vibration and directional wind. Vibro-tactile collision feedback — which combines vibration and touch to help give participants a physical sense of constraints in a virtual environment — will also be included.
Sounds like a science fiction show (Score:4, Interesting)
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Well that would just put them on equal footing with pilots [slashdot.org].
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in the military, a major objective of weapons training is to desensitize the shooter to shooting people.
democracy is not worth spreading. freedom is but not democracy, people always get the two confused. however, even freedom is not worth spreading if people don't want it.
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You can't give some one freedom. You can't make a giant freedom cake and put up a mission accomplished banner and be done. The people have to want freedom. Most people forget it took 20 years after the American Revolutionary War before we had a stable repeatable government.
1783 revolutionary war ended.
1801 Jefferson replaces Adams as president which set the precedent for others to follow.
You need several leaders to be rotated through to set the presence that future generations follow.
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Grand Theft Planet.
one step closer (Score:1)
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Re:Just like military intelligence is an oxymoron (Score:4, Insightful)
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You have obviously never been in the military. Getting soldiers to think on their feet and solve problems is the majority of training. Knowing how to technically use and maintain weapons and equipment is a small part. If you check, you will discover that privates are a small minority of soldiers. Modern warfare requires people who can think.
This is why indoctrination is so important in the military, because you need soldiers that both follow (lawful) orders blindly but also show initiative and problem solving in the moment. It is quite the feat to train soldiers to do both, as free thinking and blind obedience tend to not work together well IMHO.
When working with people with military backgrounds it is often mystifying that they can be so efficient with strong independent problem solving skills, but also blindly follow very poor business proces
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Thinking or Indoctrination.... (Score:2)
Several friends of mine that are war vets all have said they don't trust the current recruits because they follow orders without question. One friend that has been a life time warrior and has went back for 3 tours of duty mustered out because of how the new guys act.
So will their simulator be used to get rid of the guys that don't blindly follow orders? will they put in scenarios where the best and correct course of action is to frag the CO?
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If the 20-something year old won't charge a machine gun nest on the hill quickly and without question, he probably won't charge it at all.
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Several friends of mine that are war vets all have said they don't trust the current recruits because they follow orders without question.
It would be nice if those guys would be active on social networking, because a lot of people seem to think that soldiers are supposed to Do What They Are Told No Matter What, and they need another think to come to them.
Wasted tax dollars (Score:2)
As a veteran I can tell you that this is a huge waste of money. Every situation is different, every reaction is different, and every outcome is different. This is yet another attempt to develop the ability to have thought police.
PTSD research should explain and back my assertion.
Duke's DiVE system does it better (Score:2)
meh (Score:2)
It's never going to be "real-world" until there's a real element of real shit hitting the real fan.
If there is no real danger of being killed then this is nothing more than a (probably very cool) video game.
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Did not know that the training in the US military is so hard that you can get killed during exercising.
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Did not know that the training in the US military is so hard that you can get killed during exercising.
Yes I am aware (been there, done that) but training in a sim dome isn't going to be that way if for no other reason than live fire would destroy the dome itself.
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It's never going to be "real-world" until there's a real element of real shit hitting the real fan.
If there is no real danger of being killed then this is nothing more than a (probably very cool) video game.
Untrue. Our local Sheriff's department has a huge screen/wall that they use for shoot/don't shoot training scenarios. I was able to participate in one of the drills as a guest a few years back. Even though I knew it was just a video, and the gun in my hand was empty, when the drill began everything got weird. When your whole field of vision is filled with a realistic-enough video, part of your brain treats it as if it was real. Heart rate and blood pressure went up, a bit of tunnel vision set in. I wound up