Planning and Execution Control Architecture for Infantry Serious Gaming

Serious gaming is developing among all modern armies for teaching and training as well as for developing new concepts of engagement. To reach a realistic level of simulation, online planning techniques provide an expressive and constructive approach to define basic tactical activities. To achieve a mission goal, a virtual soldier must follow a short-term plan that can be quickly reprocessed in order to follow changes in the environment, orders or situation awareness. This paper presents a planning and execution control architecture for simulating the behaviour of virtual infantry soldier. The planning approach relies on the frequent generation of short plans using a Hierarchical Task Networks approach. Execution control handles synchronisations of soldiers and trigger replanning whenever action cannot be executed in simulation. Applied to two generic types of action, preliminary results show that response times match the level of reactivity needed for serious gaming.