Title: MURI: Intelligent Distributed Group and Team Training Systems

Sponsor: DoD/Air Force Office of Scientific Research
Amount: $4,683,000
Period: 5/1/2000-4/29/2005

PI:  Richard A. Volz (Dept. of Computer Science, Texas A&M)
co-PI: Thomas R. Ioerger (Dept. of Computer Science, Texas A&M)
co-PI: Wayne Shebilske (Dept. of Psychology, Wright State)
co-PI: John Yen (Institute for Science and Technology, Penn State)

The goal of this MURI project is to develop a foundation for
efficacious training of complex performance.  The two, high-level
underlying themes are: 1) enhancing group and team training
capabilities through the use of intelligent agents, and 2) building a
long term synergistic collaboration for advanced learning technologies
between cognitive psychologists and computer scientists.

The two types of intelligent agents being developed to assist team
training are partner agents and coaching agents.  Coaching agents
provide coaching feedback to trainees and their team based on the
performance and the process of the team. Partner agents assist
individual trainees by taking over the execution of some of the task
components, thus allowing the trainee to concentrate on learning
specific components, and to assist team training by fulfilling the
roles of some team members.  Both types of agents require knowledge
and intelligence about desired team interactions, which are enabled by
CAST, a team-based agent architecture.

Two application domains are being investigated under this research:
Space Fortress and a synthetic task related to the AWACS weapons
director teams.