Realistic Virtual Actors for Training in Counterterrorism

Terrorism has become a common international threat, and is particularly problematic to counter because it occurs in a civilian rather than military context. It is difficult to differentiate terrorists from normal civilians because their strategy is to merge into the crowd and thereby avoid detection. Providing security personnel with the necessary experience to spot terrorists in a crowd can be time consuming and resource intensive. Simulation can provide a valuable complement to current approaches, making them more efficient, cost effective and reducing the manpower and infrastructure required to support training. This paper describes how realistic virtual actors can be used to provide the counterterrorism trainee with experience in detecting abnormal behaviour and using tactics that increase the visibility of a terrorist concealed in a crowd. Our approach is to use the cognitive architecture, CoJACKTM, to create virtual actors (civilians, terrorists) that react variably but realistically to the trainee’s and other virtual actors’ actions. These virtual actors are imbued with emotions, such as fear, anger and anxiety, which lead them to react plausibly to events in the scenario. The key point is that these reactions are not scripted but emerge from the interplay between the virtual actor’s cognitive and emotional faculties. This yields a flexible training environment that is responsive to what the trainee does. In many ways, it is more difficult to generate realistic behaviour in a civilian rather than military context the actions and reactions can be quite subtle. This paper outlines a civilian counterterrorism scenario, set in London, in which there is a terrorist on reconnaissance, diverse types of civilian with varying goals and emotional states. The virtual environment, VBS2TM was used to represent the physical environment and the characters’ embodiments.