Symposium Using Synthetic Teammates to Train Teamwork Skills: Perspectives and Issues

Abstract

This symposium considers both the challenges and the opportunities for the training of teamwork skills with synthetic teammates. Synthetic entities offer a potential opportunity to deliver simulation-based team training in a less expensive, more convenient, more easily deployed form. They may also increase the quality and quantity of training by creating learning opportunities for the team that might never be encountered in less controlled training with live players. The focus of the symposium is on how synthetic teammates can best be designed and used to train teamwork, guided by learning objectives. The papers in the symposium consider what is needed to create and employ synthetic teammates and synthetic instructors, and cover several application areas, a range of levels of fidelity for the simulation environment and the synthetic teammates, a variety of modeling tools, and several evaluation and measurement approaches. Their common focus is how best to exploit synthetic entities for competency-based teamwork training.