CBBS News
Navy-Funded Urban Military Operations Research At Clemson Continues
Prompted by the increase in military confrontations on urban terrain—as opposed to open rural settings—the U.S. Navy has commissioned Clemson University professors with research relevant to that training need. The initiative is led by Eric Muth and Fred Switzer, both human factors psychologists in the College of Business and Behavioral Science, and Adam Hoover, a computer science professor from the College of Engineering and Science.
The research entails running possible battle scenarios in simulated urban terrain environments; it is housed in the Military Operations in Urban Terrain Research Center (MOUT), a state-of-the art research and training shoothouse. The technology therein includes video position tracking, laser-tag inspired weapons, helmets with “hit detectors,” wireless heart monitors to indicate stress, and a visual review system that shows the action in the shoothouse both while it happens and when it is complete.
The MOUT team notes that theirs is “a unique, interdisciplinary collaboration that allows our team to study problems from both a human system and a machine perspective. Muth, who was a Navy scientist for three years, said that graduate and undergraduate students are also important partners in the research. “Without students, we wouldn’t be able to accomplish work of this magnitude,” he said.
MOUT is now beginning another research venture funded by the Navy’s Virtual Technologies and Environments Program (VERTE). The research question asked in this series of experiments is whether computer and virtual reality training are comparable to real-world training.