Army Taps Forterra to Add Intelligent NPCs to OLIVE

Forterra Systems announced today that it had been awarded a US Army Research and Development Command Phase II SBIR to develop intelligent non-player characters for its virtual world platform, OLIVE. The project is in partnership with AI-tool-developer Charles River Analytics. Forterra will develop a non-proprietary interface for itnegrating third-party AI-based apps, and Charles River will develop a sample integration and crowd simulation based on its AgentWorks platform. The hope is to add intelligent NPCs to virtual worlds, reducing the need for live roleplayers and trainers in online education.

“The use of Virtual World technologies shows great promise as a tool to support infantry training but the need for large numbers of live role players to create realistic scenarios limited the overall benefit,”  Colonel Craig Langhauser, Director of the US Army Research and Development Command, said in a statement. “This effort has the potential to dramatically reduce the need for live role players without sacrificing the engaging nature of the scenario that’s created when they are present.” 

The first step will demonstrate feasibility and then focus on commercialization for training across military needs like combat medicine and emergency preparedness and also corporate training exercises such as sales and call center exercises.

“Up to now, virtual world solutions relied on and even promoted the fact that all participants in the world were driven by real people,” added Dave Rolston, CEO Forterra Systems. “Where this is important for some types of applications, particularly in the consumer sector, it limits the use in others because of the high cost of live role players. With tightly integrated support for NPCs, OLIVE will be able to support a wider variety of applications for government and corporate users.”