PEO STRI, in collaboration with the Central Florida Tech Grove, is conducting a Tabletop Exchange for industry and academia to provide insights and ideas on how to address a key soldier training challenge. The information gathered will be used to determine what follow-on initiatives PEO STRI might pursue to move toward a viable solution to fill this critical gap in soldier training performance analysis.
We invite you to join us to help shape our understanding of potential solutions to the problem described below. Plan to send your technical experts who can provide insights based on your organization’s capabilities or that of other organizations that you know.
Register to participate using the form below. During the registration process, you will be asked to select one or two of the solution capability areas. You will also be asked to upload a capabilities statement or digital brochure outlining your organization’s relevant expertise.
1. What is the problem?
We want to more effectively evaluate and provide feedback on the performance of a soldier and squad. We need to collect data on what each soldier and squad is doing, determine what was done correctly and incorrectly, and provide feedback to each soldier and squad about how they performed and how to perform better.
2. Why is it a problem?
A trainer often has limited visibility of all the squad members and their actions and may not see the interaction between the soldiers. Therefore, the trainer has incomplete information as he tries to mentor the squad.
The trainer may not have the knowledge or experience to coach each soldier and the squad in corrective actions. Often a nine member squad has two trainers resulting in an inability to adequately monitor and assess each soldier’s performance.
Currently, when a squad is part of a larger event, evaluating the squad’s performance is a secondary goal. We need to evaluate all soldiers and units in a training event, regardless of the scale of the event. Continuous evaluation and feedback will increase the unit’s performance.
Currently, the trainer gives vocal feedback to the soldier and squad immediately after the squad runs a scenario. Sometimes this is sufficient. Other times, providing some type of visual feedback would enhance the soldier’s understanding of how they can improve.
3. What are some desired capabilities of a solution?
1. Collection of data from the soldier’s movements such as position (standing/prone), movement (walking/running), voice commands, and hand signals. Any device on the soldier must be small and light. Devices in the training area must account for trees and buildings.
2. Collect of data from the soldier’s weapon such as orientation, firing, and reloading. Any device on the weapon must be small and light.
3. An AI agent that analyzes data from the soldier and squad and provides feedback on performance.
4. A means of audio and visual feedback upon completion of the practice run at the training site. The equipment must be small and light, easy to use, and use local power (battery, vehicle, etc.)