A human-in-the loop approach for representing populations in virtual and constructive simulations

摘要

In military operations the presence of civilians has become the rule rather than the exception. The contemporary operations environment involves constant contact between military units and local populations. It is therefore necessary that the human terrain be properly represented in the synthetic environments used for military training and experimentation. This paper argues that there is room in this domain for simulations of civilians combining simplified (and thus computationally performant) behaviour models and versatile user interfaces. The idea is to allow a knowledgeable human to control the main population dynamics in real time, while leaving elementary individual behaviours to the computer. This concept is the result of a requirements collection activity with Canadian Army training experts of which the results are presented. This paper also proposes a prototype that addresses a core group of these requirements. The design of the user interface is presented as well as the models used to represent pedestrians, animals, vehicles and their behaviours.