Virtual Employment Test Bed Operational Research and Systems Analysis to Test Armaments Designs Early in the Life Cycle.

摘要

There is always a desire to gather user test data early in the product development life cycle in order to avoid the larger costs of changing a design later. The DoD has encouraged the use of modeling and simulation as a way of achieving early insight to the capabilities or improvements of a new design. The Virtual Employment Test bed (VETB) allows engineers to test and evaluate material solutions in a realistic combination live/virtual environment, as well as the associated user performance characteristics. This program brings together three current, state-of-the-art, ARDEC capabilities to form a user performance evaluation test bed where ARDEC designs will be evaluated under operational scenarios at any point in the system lifecycle. The Virtual Employment Test Bed (VETB) provides a 180 degree wrap around environment where any ARDEC (and PM) system can be evaluated. VETB provides engineer and user jury feedback, in an operational environment to capture more realistic performance measurements. Once users have completed an exercise, their performance data, such as accuracy and reaction time, will be immediately available. System adjustments can be made and tests rerun rapidly. The VETB offers flexibility and can be altered for specific systems if necessary. While the typical first person shoot simulations are usually used for training, the TBRL utilizes virtual adversaries to conduct testing of the design and function of equipment. The VETB is an integration of several systems that creates a full scale targeting measurement system. The VETB is configured for data collection, including video recording equipment and motion capture cameras and sensors on guns to record trigger pulls. The test bed also includes computer control systems, video recording, motion capture (MOCAP), audio/visual equipment, and flexible integration of stimulus devices; x, y, z location coordinates are captured in real time.