Enhancing Spatial Awareness with Tactile cues in a Virtual Environment

Abstract

Situation awareness is a critical component to many complex military tasks, where operators must be aware of the situation around them as it unfolds in real-time. Warfighters involved in military operations in urban terrain (MOUT) operate in a dynamic, highly stressful environment, where specific knowledge, such as spatial awareness of potential enemy location within a given space is required. Virtual training systems are one method that may be used to train soldiers, as they offer multimodal displays that expose trainees to situations/conditions that are otherwise expensive and dangerous for repeated live training (e.g., live bullets; injuries). This study examined the benefits of incorporating haptic cues into a VE training environment to enhance spatial awareness across successive training to examine learning effects associated with haptic training cues.