Adaptive military behaviour in a collaborative simulation

Abstract

Development of innovative and effective technologies to support complex collaborative human activities depends both on observation and analysis of these activities and on iterative development and evaluation of the technologies in the deployment context. Applying these principles to military mission planning and execution is challenging. As a low cost approach to investigating these issues, we advocate the exploitation of commercial gaming environments. In the research reported here, we have developed a simulation environment based on the commercial warfare game Battlefield 2, and we use this environment to observe and analyse military behaviour and to evaluate how it is affected by technological interventions such as software agents. In this paper we describe the environment and illustrate how it can enhance our understanding of military activities and support our investigations of adaptive mission planning as a means of achieving rapid adaptation to changing circumstances in a battlefield. Our research explores methods for interpreting the collaborative behaviour of simulation participants and constructing dynamic models of the mission context. We investigate how a planning agent can actively support participants by comparing the current context to the mission plans and objectives and suggesting actions that will facilitate participants' progress. We also describe how the environment can be extended to simulate the effects of both sensor and communication networks in military operations. Finally, the use of computer-based games and community-based development of additions to this environment provides a sharp contrast to more traditional methods used by military organizations for developing systems, sensors and agents to aid their war fighters. We compare the two approaches and indicate where the new methods have a place in military thinking.