Multimodal Interaction with a Map-Based Simulation System*

INTRODUCTION This report describes InterLACE (Interface to LACE), a natural language and graphical interface to the LACE (Land Air Combat in ERIC) military simulation system from Rome Air Development Center, Grifiss Air Force Base, NY [Anken 89]. Our research group at NCARAI has special interest in such related issues as the mental modeling of spatial information, multimodal human-computer interaction, and the linguistics of 2-D and 3-D spatial relations in computerized map-based decision aids, command and control systems, and virtual environments. In particular we wish to investigate how the naturalness of human-computer dialog in multimodal interfaces might be improved by applying principles of human-human discourse understanding. LACE, a map-based military system containing a large real-world cartographic database, seemed like it would serve as an excellent testbed for exploring these issues.