VIrtual Characters for team Training: Emotional, Adaptive, Motivated and Social – VICTEAMS

Several application areas need rescuer teams to be trained to manage crises in complex socio-technical environments (e.g. terrorist attacks, natural disasters). The members of these emergency teams need to adapt, under emotional stress, to potential disruptions due to the uncertainties of crisis management situations such as the danger of the situation itself, a state of intense stress or a potential failure of a team member. Our interdisciplinary group of partners brings in skills in experimental psychology, artificial intelligence, pedagogy and software engineering to design a virtual environment that overcomes the limitations of existing training systems. The VICTEAMS project aims at designing computational models for virtual environments featuring virtual characters that are endowed with emotion, social and cognitive capabilities for training rescuer teams. We propose the combined consideration of psychological processes that underlie emotions, social relations and social norms within virtual characters. These processes will be integrated into social virtual characters and a virtual environment that is dynamic and realistic for training non-technical collective skills. Several user groups and several domain will benefit from the VICTEAMS training environment (e.g. firefighters, military and civil protection, ermergency medical service, first rescuers, humanitarian NGOs).