Virtual Operating Room Team Training via Computer–Based Agents

The Virtual Operating Room (VOR) is an operating room training environment capable of supporting team training for surgical procedures. One of the challenges of creating such a team training environment is assembling a suitable team of participants for a training session. In the VOR, simulated agents may be substituted for actual participants. This provides the ability to conduct training sessions with a few or even one participant. In this paper, the VOR computer-based agent architecture is presented. The agent automaton in VOR interacts with others agents present in the environment through specific inputs and outputs such as voice recognition, environment sensors, and equipment simulators. In the VOR simulation architecture, the primary components in the system such as voice recognition and rendering are decoupled and therefore allow for modular development and abstraction. The potential interactions between the simulated agents and the trainee(s) are based on an underlying scenario script. The script provides the potential sequence of steps, interchanges, branching (deviations) that may occur in the training.