Using Artificial Team Members for Team Training in Virtual Environments

In a good team, members do not only perform their individual task, they also coordinate their actions with other members of the team. Developing such team skills usually involves exercises with all members playing their role. This approach is costly and has organizational and educational drawbacks. We developed a more efficient and flexible approach by setting training in virtual environments, and using intelligent software agents to play the role of team members. We developed a general framework for developing agents that, in a controlled fashion, execute the behavior that enables the human player (i.e., trainee) to effectively learn team skills. The framework is tested by developing and implementing various types of team agents in a game-based virtual environment..