Virtually Human: Researchers explore powerful medium for experiential learning

In the Army's Emergent Leader Immersive Training Environment, or ELITE, Soldiers hone their basic counseling skills through practice with virtual humans like virtual Staff Sergeant Jessica Chen. New research aims to get robots and humans to speak the same language to improve communication in fast-moving and unpredictable situations. Scientists from the U.S. Army Research Laboratory and the University of Southern California Institute for Creative Technologies are exploring the potential of developing a flexible multimodal human-robot dialogue that includes natural language, along with text, images and video processing. "Research and technology are essential for providing the best capabilities to our Warfighters," said Dr. Laurel Allender, director of the U.S. Army Research Laboratory Human Research and Engineering Directorate. "This is especially so for the immersive and live-training environments we are developing to achieve squad overmatch and to optimize Soldier performance, both mentally and physically."