Virtual Soldier

Technology is becoming more and more integrated into all aspects of our lives.  It should come as no surprise that new technological advancements might change the way the military forces of the future look, act and even operate.  The Virtual Soldier program uses computer simulations to design future combat systems for the war fighter.

Video provided by The Pentagon Channel

Ten Technologies: A Brief Look at Military Evolution – Modeling and Simulation

By Carla Voorhees,
Defense Media Activity

This is the final in a series of 10 technologies integral to the United States military since World War I.

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All branches of the military rely on modeling and simulation for planning purposes, war games, training, exercises, development of new technology, and many other reasons.

There is a tactical advantage to war-game modeling: using maps, figurines, virtual reality and full-scale exercises allow warfighters to “see” a battle beforehand and prepare for the challenges they will face. Virtual sand tables are making that even easier, showing terrain and building representations in an easy-to-use format.

Modeling and simulation can also be used to develop new technology. How a new technology will perform can be tested both virtually and in the lab. For example, a new aircraft wing shape can be drawn on a computer and then tested in a wind tunnel. Both sets of tests are a form of modeling.

Additionally, new technologies can be tested and evaluated for human compatibility. Ultimately, the end user must be able to understand the system and be able to interact with it in a comfortable manner, both physically and intellectually. Labs such as the Usability Lab run by the National Center for Telehealth and Technology are great examples of this type of simulation.

Ten Technologies: A Brief Look at Military Evolution — Training Simulators

By Carla Voorhees,
Defense Media Activity
 
This is the eighth in a series of 10 technologies integral to the United States military since World War I.
 
Training simulators can act as a dress rehearsal for critical skills prior to deployment.
 
The military uses many kinds of training simulators, ranging from the helicopter and aircraft simulators developed by the U.S. Air Force, to the maintenance trainers developed by the U.S. Army, to the I Marine Expeditionary Force’s Battle Simulation Center featuring the Office of Naval Research’s Infantry Immersion Trainer at Camp Pendelton, CA.
 
More specifically, the Infantry Immersion Trainer is a 32,000-square foot facility that uses virtual reality to recreate urban scenes to give troops the necessary skills to navigate a battle overseas. Using weaponry modified to work like laser-tag and paint-ball, Marines navigate through realistic houses, alleys, and other structures, and interact with avatars representing civilians and enemy combatants.
 
The training system, which debuted in 2007, equips infantry troops with a similar tool set already afforded to aviators and tank commanders. They can practice combat missions and interact with avatars and background actors to work on language skills.

Assessing Brain Injury: Virtual Reality May Hold Answer

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By Barb Ruppert,
TATRC science and technology writer for Army.mil

With the possibilities of concussion, neurotoxin exposure and post-traumatic stress disorder among service members, the need for accurate and widespread assessment of brain function is critical.

An individual’s performance on standardized cognitive tasks can reveal the extent of injury, even when other signs and symptoms are not immediately apparent. This enables healthcare staff to start treatment earlier, monitor its effectiveness more closely, and make more accurate return-to-duty decisions.

Participants at a national workshop on the biological assessment of brain dysfunction held last spring discussed recent advancements in neurocognitive testing, including the use of virtual reality. The event was funded by the U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command’s Telemedicine and Advanced Technology Research Center, or TATRC.

Workshop co-chair and TATRC director Col. Karl Friedl noted that cognitive assessment must become unobtrusive and even fun.

“If it’s fun, individuals will be more motivated and the results could be more accurate,” he said.

THE IMPORTANCE OF COGNITIVE TESTING

Dr. Jennifer Vasterling, chief of psychology at the VA Boston Healthcare System and professor of psychiatry at Boston University, presented an overview of cognitive abnormalities associated with post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD reactions. She explained that cognitive testing can illuminate specific functionally relevant difficulties so healthcare professionals can identify other problem areas, in addition to emotional symptoms, to target in treatment. She discussed exposure therapy as one example.

“We know that exposure therapy is effective in treating PTSD, but that it works better for some people than for others,” she explained. “What if cognitive impairment or, conversely, cognitive proficiency influences a person’s ability to benefit from the treatment? Exposure therapy requires recall of traumatic memories and the formation of new emotional associations with those memories.”

“Perhaps research on memory and other cognitive functions important to the process of change in this and other PTSD interventions could help us augment the interventions so they are more effective for people with a cognitive impairment,” she said.

For cognitive assessment, the military currently uses paper-and-pencil tests as well as the Automated Neuropsychological Assessment Metrics, or ANAM, computerized test. Workshop co-chair Dr. Robert Kane, project manager for the Neurocognitive Assessment Tool Program at the Defense and Veterans Brain Injury Center, shared findings related to concussion.

He noted the importance of cognitive tests, citing studies showing that such tests detected concussion effects in individuals even after they reported themselves to be symptom free. Kane said that computerized tests seem to provide more detail than traditional ones, thus illuminating different cognitive effects stemming from different types of concussion.

“An emerging pattern of evidence shows that loss of consciousness is a determining factor in the type of cognitive issues resulting from a concussion,” he added.

While the ANAM has been a helpful tool for gathering data in the military, some workshop participants felt that it needed additional research to back it up. This would be particularly important in advancing it as a standard measure that the civilian community might also adopt to evaluate cognitive functioning.

THE POTENTIAL OF VIRTUAL REALITY

Col. James Ness, the new director of the Engineering Psychology Program in the Department of Behavioral Sciences and Leadership at West Point, indicated he plans to develop a team of faculty and cadet researchers to examine and scientifically evaluate the ANAM.

“We’d also like to explore additions such as virtual reality, which is perfect for today’s video game generation,” he said.

Ness believes virtual reality, or VR, could have been a useful tool in the medical training he conducted during his recent deployment as command inspector general with the NATO Training Mission/Combined Security Training Command in Afghanistan.

Several at the workshop shared Ness’s enthusiasm about potential VR applications to cognitive assessment and training.

“Just as in a flight simulator, we can embed performance measures into the virtual situation,” said co-chair Dr. Robert Kane. “We need to explore what information could be captured that we might not capture otherwise.”

Dr. Thomas Parsons, director of the NeuroSim Laboratory at the University of Southern California’s Institute for Creative Technologies, is developing and testing VR assessment tools for return-to-duty decisions after brain or psychological injury.

With Soldier input, his team has recreated multi-sensory environments and situations from Iraq and Afghanistan, including patrolling in a Humvee or on foot, and witnessing varying levels of environmental stressors, such as improvised explosive device, or IED, explosions, rocket-propelled grenades, bomb blasts and insurgent gunfire.

“The beauty of VR is that it allows us to integrate standardized neuropsychological measures into interactive applications that approximate the real world of a military service member,” he explained.

The team has worked with other partners (military and civilian) to compare their test results with standardized paper-and-pencil tests as well as ANAM results.

“My focus is on validating this technique, working with both clinical and nonclinical populations, so it can become standardized and accepted as a way to add further information to the current tests we have,” Parsons said.

Parsons’ team is also using eye tracking, psychological measures, and physiological measures such as cardiovascular reactivity and EEG to refine the virtual environments. One goal is to discover the optimal intersection of performance and stress level–if the environment is not arousing or the cognitive task is too simplistic, then the user becomes bored and disengages.

On the other hand, if the environment is overstimulating and too complex, then the individual becomes overwhelmed and frustrated. Hence, the goal is to adapt the assessment relative to the user’s optimal performance.

Through this extensive testing and refinement, the Virtual Reality Cognitive Performance Assessment Test, or VRCPAT 1.0, has evolved into VRCPAT 2.0 for Adaptive Training. This tool is part of a stress prevention project in which a virtual mentor guides individuals through traumatic episodes pre-deployment, providing coping strategies that may lessen the emotional damage from soldiers’ actual experiences in theater. The next iteration, VRCPAT 3.0, is now in development for team cognition and Mobile Counter-IED Interactive Training.

In another application of the technology, Dr. Albert “Skip” Rizzo, associate director of the Medical VR Research group at the USC Institute for Creative Technologies, is using a Virtual Iraq/Afghanistan environment similar to that used for VRCPAT to deliver exposure therapy for combat-related PTSD. He noted that a 2008 meta-analysis (Parsons and Rizzo) found that VR outperformed traditional exposure therapy for phobias, while another study found that it led to greater improvement in post-9/11 PTSD symptoms than traditional therapy.

Rizzo’s and others’ initial pilot clinical trials have shown that therapy with Virtual Iraq may achieve better results than traditional therapy, with a lower dropout rate. These findings suggest that being immersed (safely and gradually) in a simulated stressful experience could be more effective, and perhaps more engaging and acceptable to those raised with video games, than simply asking the patient to imagine the scene.

However, Rizzo noted that randomized controlled trials would be needed to support this claim. Three such trials are ongoing.

Rizzo, lead investigator JoAnn Difede, and partnering investigator Barbara Rothbaum have recently begun a three-site randomized clinical trial of VR exposure therapy’s ability to reduce PTSD symptoms compared to traditional imaginal exposure therapy. The trial is also testing whether the use of D-Cycloserine, a medication that affects emotional processing in the brain, improves results of the therapy when taken during the exposure sessions. To better objectify the outcome measurement in this study, they are using a sophisticated “startle response” conditioning/extinction paradigm.

“The startle reflex is a good indicator of PTSD because it is often amplified in these individuals and fails to extinguish as is typical with those not experiencing PTSD,” said Rizzo.

These examples are just a few of the exciting efforts in both the military and civilian research communities to improve the care of our deployed service members and veterans. Successfully preventing, identifying, and treating brain and psychological injury will be vital parts of this improvement.

TATRC fosters research on health informatics, computational biology and other key medical technology areas. For more information on TATRC’s research funding and collaborative opportunities, visit TATRC.org.

Treebeard was Right: Travelers are Less Rational than they’d like to Believe

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By Carla Voorhees

Dr. Tad Brunyé is a cognitive scientist at the U.S. Army Natick Soldier Research, Development and Engineering Center (NSRDEC) in Natick, Massachusetts. He is the recipient of the 2010 Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers for his research examining the information Soldiers and civilians use when planning routes and navigating through environments.

Most people assume that if they look at a map they are able to make an easy and deliberate decision regarding which routes to take. Most husbands (including myself) spend a decent amount of their lives attempting to convince their wives of exactly that.

“Trust me, I know the way.”

“Trust me, this is the best way to get there.”

These types of statements are pretty well-founded. People are generally very confident in their route plans (even while shopping), and usually they have selected the route for pretty good reasons. Maybe it looked like the shortest route, most direct route, fastest route, or the route with the fewest number of turns. Or perhaps it looked like the route with the most right-turns, the one avoiding back-roads, or the one likely to have the least amount of traffic. These are all very rational factors to consider. They are based on quantifiable measures such as route length, traffic density and patterns, and number and direction of turns. There is nothing wrong with this strategy.

But what is actually happening under the hood, so to speak? Do these factors alone account for all route plans? What factors might people consider without their knowledge?

In the Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, the bombastic Treebeard states “I always like going south. Somehow it feels like going downhill.”

Treebeard had an uncanny ability to predict at least one hidden strategy that people use when planning routes through environments: avoiding north-going routes. Studies in our laboratory show that about 70% of the time people prefer a south- rather than north-going route even though the competing routes are exactly the same length. Moreover, people think that heading north takes longer, burns more calories, and moves uphill relative to heading south. Of course, when we ask participants why they make these (somewhat irrational) decisions, they think about it for a while and respond that they have “no idea why” and are dumbfounded to learn about their behaviors.

So, while people generally do pretty well when planning routes, and think they have a pretty good handle on why they chose a particular route, the story is not that simple. Studies in our and others’ laboratories (see here, here, and here) suggest that the way we reason about and move through space is not only driven by explicit and conscious judgments of space such as “that route is longer” or “that route has too many turns.” Rather, people use a wide variety of strategies when making navigation decisions, some of which are completely outside of awareness. For instance, right-handers prefer to turn right, people with higher spatial skills will take more complex paths, and people overall have a bias away from selecting northbound paths.

These types of discoveries are critical to defining and characterizing the range of factors that affect navigation behavior, and hold promise in the development of predictive navigation models. When an enemy flees from a site of an attack towards a known safe-house, which path is he likely to choose? How can urban planners better design environments to accommodate high density traffic between frequented locations? In the event of a disaster, how can we predict the movement patterns of a population?

It is exactly these types of questions that can be answered by better understanding both the strategies we are aware of and the strategies that take place “under the hood” and aren’t consciously accessible to us.

The next time you’re planning a route, pause for a second and think about why you’ve chosen a particular path. You might be surprised to learn that Treebeard was correct: not all of your decisions are guided by rational thought.

ONR to Tackle Navy's Energy Challenges in Online Wargame

By Katherine H. Crawford, Office of Naval Research Corporate Strategic Communications

ARLINGTON, Va. (NNS) -- The Office of Naval Research (ONR) will launch a second scenario for its online wargame to address energy-related problems, officials announced Oct. 14 at the Naval Energy Forum.

ONR's Office of Innovation will use its Massive Multiplayer Online Wargame Leveraging the Internet (MMOWGLI) platform as a means to bring together players to reduce the U.S. Navy's heavy reliance on a finite, expensive and unreliable supply of fossil fuels.

"Energy efficiency is very important to the warfighter, yet it's usually one of the last things we think about," said Dr. Larry Schuette, ONR's director of Innovation, whose office is managing the project. "The fewer times a truck, tank, ship or airplane needs to be refueled, the greater the operational tempo. At the end of the day, it's all about warfighter effectiveness: the greater the energy efficiency, the higher the effectiveness."

Potential scenarios for the second storyline, titled EnergyMMOWGLI, include working toward efficient power conversion, portability, durability in harsh environments and lower costs. Players can register online at: http://www.onr.navy.mil/energymmowgli.

The 2011 Naval Energy Forum, being held Oct. 13-14 in Washington, D.C., brings together leaders from the Department of the Navy, industry and academia to examine ways of achieving the Secretary of the Navy's energy goals and to emphasize the importance of energy security and independence.

The MMOWGLI pilot launched in June 2011 with a fast-paced piracy scenario set off the coast of Somalia. Round two of the original scenario is expected to resume game play later this fall. Its 16,000 pre-registered players will be developing strategies for combating pirates operating in seas around the world.

ONR provides the science and technology necessary to maintain the Navy and Marine Corps' technological advantage. Through its affiliates, ONR is a leader in science and technology with engagement in 50 states, 70 countries, 1,035 institutions of higher learning and 914 industry partners. ONR employs approximately 1,400 people, comprising uniformed, civilian and contract personnel, with additional employees at the Naval Research Lab in Washington, D.C.

Fort Campbell’s New Helicopter Simulator Provides Virtual Training

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By Megan Locke, Fort Campbell Courier staff

FORT CAMPBELL, Ky., Sept. 29, 2011 — It looked like a scene out of a science fiction movie on post Wednesday morning as a group of 101st Combat Aviation Brigade (CAB) noncommissioned officers trained on a new simulator for the first time.

The Non-rated Crew Member Manned Module, or NCM3 (PDF), came to post last week to be used for the first time beyond the testing stages. The module is a simulator that was created to train helicopter crews on the rear of both the CH-47 Chinook and UH-60 Black Hawk.

Through specially created virtual reality glasses, which fit as night vision goggles would, Soldiers can perfect gunnery tasks. Also included in the simulator are ways to perfect and practice sling load and hoist operations without ever leaving the ground.

The training can be linked with the Aviation Combined Arms Tactical Trainer, allowing crew chiefs and other Soldiers to communicate seamlessly with the helicopter’s pilot who may be training in a different simulator.

The NCM3 includes task-driven scenarios, which can be adjusted by the instructor to include weather conditions, lighting variations and other specific situations.

“The weapons are M240[H]s (PDF) that we actually use in the Army,” explained Sgt. 1st Class Richard Madill. “The only thing they did was they took the mechanism out that allows it to fire. That’s the big modification that’s made. It has sensors all over to allow you to control it. It tells you when you have your mock ammo loaded, it tells you when they pull the triggers and different things like that.”

Even the simplest of everyday occurrences adds realism to the experience.

“It creates thunderstorms, and when it has the thunderstorms, you can actually hear the thunder,” Madill said. “You can see the lighting.”

Madill is a subject matter expert from the Directorate of Training and Doctrine at Fort Rucker, Ala., who actually helped in the design of this one-of-a-kind simulator.

The realism goes beyond what the gunners or other crew members might see on the screen during the simulated flight. The weaponry is also affected by a control load box, which gives the Soldier a sense of wind resistance on the gun.

“Right now, this weapon is hard to push in the opposite direction because it’s simulating that we’re flying forward very fast,” Madill said.

When equipped with the virtual glasses, Soldiers feel as if they are on board a helicopter, and they can even lean out simulated bubble windows created for the CH-47.

“He’s able to look up at the engine compartment and make sure it’s not on fire or leaking oil,” Madill explained of the simulated window’s importance to a crew member.

The simulator is good for a number of reasons, mainly because of safety, efficiency and flexibility. The simulator eliminates the need to schedule a helicopter for training, saves on fuel and ammunition costs, and lessens many of the risks faced during real flights. Inclement weather outside also does not affect the progression of training in the simulator.

“Prior to this trailer, we [didn't] have a trainer for the backseaters,” Madill said. “For the crew chiefs, door gunners, we don’t have a trainer to be able to do that. And this allows us to bring a guy out here and start some sort of aircraft progression, without actually using blade time.”

With increased safety, the simulator allows easy training on scenarios that would take much more planning and coordination otherwise.

“This allows us to train on tasks that we don’t get a chance to do normally,” Madill said. “We’re able to do this rescue hoist, which in real life, it’s dangerous to put a live person on the hoist. It’s dangerous, but we need to be able to train it. This allows us to train it here. We don’t have to use blade time to do that, we don’t have to (risk) someone’s life.”

Madill added the simulator should increase “unit cohesion, crew cohesion and crew coordination.” Sgt. Weston Williams, 101st CAB, spent a significant amount of time in the gunner’s position in the simulator’s UH-60 Black Hawk setup. He agreed with Madill’s assessment, adding that the “high-tech video game” feel would be ideal for training first-time crew members.

“It will give a chance to evaluate the new guys first and see where they stand,” he said.

Fellow Sgt. Nolin Worthley, 101st CAB, said the scope of the scenarios available would aid in training for combat situations.

“You’d be surprised how many similarities there are between this and the real [helicopter],” he said. “I think it is fantastic. You can do a whole lot of things. This is going to actually make it where I can at least get people talking correctly on the radios before I’m actually putting them in [a helicopter].”

This article first appeared on Army.mil.

DOD Schools Engage Students With Technology

By Julie Weckerlein, Elaine Sanchez

American Forces Press Service

When children walk into a Defense Department school this year, they may be handed a laptop or electronic reader, or perhaps they’ll be asked to build a robot or try out a simulator on the school lawn.

Technology has long since changed the nation; it’s now time to use these advances to transform its schools, the acting director of the Department of Defense Education Activity said.

“It’s about 21st century learning,” Marilee Fitzgerald said in an interview with American Forces Press Service. “And 21st century learning is infused with technology.”

With new initiatives, state-of-the-art equipment and a student-centered model of education, the education activity is entering a new technology-based era, she said, that’s aimed at energizing and engaging its students.

DOD schools are moving away from an education model that calls for all children to be on the same page, learning the same information, all at the same time, Fitzgerald said, to a model that is about a child’s individual needs and learning styles.

Now, rather than all students being on Page 45 in Chapter 4, they’re divided into learning centers. A visitor to a 1st or 2nd grade room may see children at one table working on writing, and others working on vocabulary or reading at another. And at each table, the students are working at different levels based on their ability and interests.

“It’s a very student-centered approach,” Fitzgerald noted.

The activity also is leveraging virtual technology to further engage students. Virtual classes have been a resounding success, she said, with 1,000 enrollments in its virtual learning program.

The virtual program gives students options based on their interests while also helping them to avoid educational gaps, Fitzgerald said, which is particularly important for military children who may move, on average, six to eight times over the course of their school career.

A student may have taken three years of Japanese at one school, but can’t finish a fourth year at another since the language taught there is German. Through virtual classes, students not only can take Japanese, but also can do so with a class in the same time zone or even another, with one-on-one attention from a teacher, Fitzgerald said.

“In the 20th century, you’d be told, ‘Love German,’” she said. “‘We can’t offer Japanese, so fall in love with what we have to offer you.’ But we’re offering a different approach.”

Other classes, whether virtual or not, will reflect the nation’s emphasis on the importance of embedding science, technology, engineering and mathematics — or STEM — into schools, Fitzgerald noted. Last year, officials launched a new literacy program chosen for its focus, not just on historical figures, but on advances or people in STEM fields.

This year, students will showcase their knowledge of STEM with specific activities, she added, such as simulators or robots being built on a school field.

Technology also is transforming DOD classrooms, Fitzgerald said. In a 20th century classroom, computers are relegated to a lab and, without wireless technology, are spaced at intervals along the wall to plug into outlets and connections.

But today’s classrooms include mobile, flexible technology, she said. For example, rather than screens embedded into a wall, teachers have “smart boards” on rollers that can be moved from one classroom to another.

“The 21st century classroom is designed to accommodate learning,” she said. “The technology should be almost transparent to the learner.”

Even the furniture reflects a new style of collaborative instruction and use of technology, she noted. In the past, students would sit at a desk with a chair that’s connected. Now students may sit around tables or at desks that can be shifted to suit the lesson. Or they may sit auditorium-style, surrounded by a panoramic screen and listening to instruction from a teacher who is in another classroom and simultaneously teaching another class. And in either case, they may have a handheld device or electronic reader in their hands, she said.

Fitzgerald said she visited an elementary class that was using a smart board. The teacher, she recalled, was teaching a grammar lesson. A list of nouns and verbs appeared on the board, and two icons became swirling vortexes. Children had to come to the board and drag a noun over. If the noun was wrong, the vortex spit it out, or pulled it in if it was correct.

“They love it,” she said. “The teacher could really engage the learner. It’s real. It’s exciting. It captures their attention.”

In another classroom Fitzgerald visited, every child held a clicker. The teacher, she said, would ask a question, and the students would press a button that matched their answer. Through technology, students’ responses were plotted into a graph so the teacher could see the number of right and wrong responses. And the students could learn about pie charts and other graphs.

“It’s conceptual thinking,” Fitzgerald said. “It’s not just simply in the old way of taking a sample. It’s instantaneous graphical representation.”

But this technology doesn’t serve a purpose if teachers aren’t able to access it quickly and efficiently, Fitzgerald noted. It would defeat the purpose, she explained, if it took teachers 20 minutes to pull down a video clip to show to their class.

To ensure they can use technology in real time, she said, the education activity will be increasing its schools’ bandwidth beginning this spring so technology can be used without downtime.

Renovation projects and new construction also will help to ensure technology can be used in a meaningful way. The education activity’s schools are older, Fitzgerald acknowledged, and many fall into the lower two levels of quality standards. These issues aren’t related to safety, she added, but to issues such as plumbing.

To remedy this, the Defense Department launched a program last school year to renovate or replace 134 of its 194 schools worldwide. The DOD programmed $3.7 billion so the activity can bring all of its schools up to the top two quality levels by 2016, Fitzgerald said, and Congress appropriated nearly $400 million in fiscal 2011 to aid the effort.

This effort is aimed not only at modernizing the schools, but also at accommodating learning. Gone will be the wires and evenly spaced plugs along a wall, she said.

“We’ve reached a point where we need a purposefully built environment,” Fitzgerald added. “We’re transforming learning and teaching, as well as transforming the buildings in which we operate.”

Whether at work or at home, people’s lives are infused with technology, she said, and “our children should be learning in the way we live today.”

Fitzgerald said it’s especially gratifying to offer these opportunities to children from military families. Military members make great sacrifices, she noted, but their children’s education shouldn’t be among them.

“When our military members do the very important work they have to do to defend our nation, they want to rest assured their children’s education isn’t compromised due to their career choice,” she said. “I want parents to know that when they come into a DoDEA school we’ve got it, we can do it. And it will be relevant to them.”

Capture the Flag -- Navy Increases Awareness of Command Missions with Virtual Game

From Defense Media Activity, Navy

WASHINGTON (NNS) -- The Navy Office of Information announced Aug. 16 that the official U.S. Navy Facebook page is putting a new spin on an old game by challenging Facebook fans to a virtual "Capture the Flag" game.

The game officially begins Monday, Aug. 22 at 8 a.m. local time for each participating command, and will run through Aug. 26.

Traditionally, the game of capture the flag is played outdoors with two teams that have a flag strategically placed in their territory. The objective is to capture the other team's flag, in their own territory, and bring it back to your own base.

The Navy's version of Capture the Flag brings that competition to Navy Facebook fans around the world by attacking and defending a virtual "flag" which is actually a unique photo created by each participating command.

Instead of being picked for a team, Facebook fans can join any team they choose by uploading the team's banner to their profile picture. The banner will be available as a photo on the command's page. Fans are encouraged to attack their opponent by "liking" the opposing commands "flag" each day. They can defend their own team's flag by writing a positive comment on their own page's "flag" each day. At the end of the day the attacks and defends are tallied and a percentage of the teams will move on to the next round beginning at 8 a.m. the next day.

For simplicity, other rules associated with the traditional capture the flag game were eliminated for the Navy version.

The purpose of the virtual Capture the Flag game is to give each participating Navy command an opportunity to talk about their unique mission while bracketed with another command of a different mission. Healthy competition and team pride by unique Navy commands are what motivates the fans to participate.

"Navy Facebook fans are very interested in Sailors and the work they do," said Lt. Lesley Lykins, director of emerging media integration for the Navy. "Our Capture the Flag game is another fun way for Americans to support their favorite Sailors and commands and learn what other commands do to support our overall mission."

Each day, a winning command returns pitted against another winning command as both advance in the bracket and deliver a new message to their fans about their mission. Commands will post their flag each day at 8 a.m. local time for that command. As teams are eliminated, fans can switch their alliance to a new team to continue playing the game.

Each evening, the U.S. Navy Facebook page will announce which commands have been eliminated and which are still playing. On Aug. 26 at noon, the overall winner of Capture the Flag will be announced and featured the following week in the U.S. Navy Facebook page profile picture, with the winning command's flags "flying" on the Navy page throughout the week.

To learn more about the U.S. Navy's virtual version of "Capture the Flag" visit the U.S. Navy Facebook page at facebook.com/USNavy.

There are more than 355,000 fans of the U.S. Navy Facebook page and 521 commands on the U.S. Navy Social Media Directory.

Telehealth Allows Providers to Care for Service Members ‘From a Distance’

By Corina Notyce, DCoE Strategic Communications

Imagine being a psychologist sitting across from your patient.

Now imagine that patient is actually hundreds of miles away.

This is the scenario behind the National Center for Telehealth and Technology’s (T2) first live Introduction to Telemental Health Delivery workshop, recently held at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Wash. The workshop offered guidance to providers on how to offer mental health services from a distance—in this case, using video conferencing technology.

“The Department of Defense is pushing for this form of care because it’s a way to reach a lot of people who otherwise wouldn’t get care,” said workshop presenter Dr. Greg Kramer, T2 clinical health psychologist.

About 25 health care professionals from every military branch attended the training, some from as far away as Japan. The session included information on the history of teletechnology in health care, addressed legal challenges, and provided a chance for attendees to practice video conferencing with each other.

“[This workshop] allows them to get comfortable with the technology,” Kramer said.

An estimated 87 million Americans live in places where health care is difficult to access. Additionally, up to 25 percent of service members screen positive for mental health concerns, according to T2’s Introduction to Telemental Health.

“This allows us to provide things like telepsychiatric appointments especially in rural and high needs areas,” said Dr. Jamie Adler, T2 clinical telehealth division chief.

The technology can be used in a variety of ways, from treating post-traumatic stress disorder and depression, to wellness and resiliency interventions. Many of the attendees had started using teletechnology to provide such services to patients at off-site locations.

This rare in-person training, as opposed to online sessions, gave these providers the chance to learn more about technical, legal and clinical elements of providing telemental health care.

“I took some notes that I think are valid points for implementing this,” said Dr. Agnes Babkirk, a psychologist from U.S. Naval Hospital in Okinawa, Japan.

She’s bringing the information back to her colleagues, who currently use teletechnology to interact with patients three or four times a week. Dr. Daniel Christensen, the chief of Madigan Army Medical Center’s Soldier Readiness Service, had a similar experience, as they began using teletechnology for post-deployment behavioral health screenings in March.

For more information on how T2 is integrating technology with psychology, visit their website, and download the DoD Telemental Health Guidebook.

America’s Army Platform Trains Soldiers in Explosive Ordnance Disposal

By Carla Voorhees

Dr. Bernard Reger is an engineer at the US Army Armament Research, Development and Engineering Center (ARDEC) located at Picatinny Arsenal, NJ. He is the lead for Business Planning and Development at the Armament Software Engineering Center, a CMMI Maturity Model 5 rated life cycle software engineering center, responsible for development, management, and sustainment of our Soldiers’ software intensive systems.

Tron.  It was 1982 and the world watched as Kevin Flynn was sucked into his computer by a laser pointed at his back.  We watched the laser scan and pull him into the computer.  For the next hour or so, Flynn battled his way through a computer generated world.  Like most computer ‘geeks’ of my generation, I was captivated.  ‘Programs’ were beaten in disc games and de-rezzed, but they were only computer generated.  I was so looking forward to buying my own person sucking laser.

Time moves on and we all grow up.  First I go to Binghamton University (Binghamton, NY) and get a degree in Physics.  Then it’s off to get my Masters and PhD in Mechanical Engineering at Northwestern University (Evanston and Chicago, IL).

Fast forward to the present: I am an engineer at the Armament Software Engineering Center at the U.S. Army’s Armament Research, Development and Engineering Center in Picatinny Arsenal, NJ.  The challenge: our Soldiers in Explosive Ordnance Disposal (that’s mil-speak for bomb squad) use state-of-the-art robots, such as Qinetiq TALON and iRobot PackBot, to disarm or destroy explosive devices placed by our enemies.  Soldiers want to practice on the robot as much as possible before they are tasked on a mission with life or death consequences, but most of them are already being used and aren’t always available for training.

Enter Tron, or something like it.  The America’s Army game (at the time of writing) has 12 million registered users who have virtually experienced Soldiering in the United States Army.  Using the America’s Army platform, our team’s goal was to insert the Soldier and his robot into the virtual world.  At the core of our solution lies a software architecture that enables the team to quickly build virtual robots and training tools. We create a virtual world for the robot to drive around in, create objects to drive under, over, and through, and explosives for the Soldier to dispose of.  The Soldiers use the real robot controller to operate the virtual robot and acquire the experience they need.  If they make a mistake and the explosive destroys the robot, they hit the reset button and try again.

It’s a great and rewarding place to work.  We use cutting edge software and computing technology to deliver products to our Soldiers that work the right way every time they turn it on.  To hear that our hard work helped a Soldier make it out of a tough fight and helped save lives, that’s why we do it.

I’m still waiting for my laser.