|
Building Real Security With Virtual Worlds
COLLEGE PARK, Md., Nov 26, 2009 (ASCRIBE NEWS via COMTEX) --
Advances in
computerized modeling and prediction of group behavior,
together with improvements in video game graphics, are
making possible virtual worlds in which defense analysts can
explore and predict results of many different possible
military and policy actions, say computer science
researchers at the University of Maryland in a commentary
published in the November 27 issue of the journal Science.
"Defense analysts can understand the repercussions of
their proposed recommendations for policy options or
military actions by interacting with a virtual world
environment. ... They can propose a policy option and walk
skeptical commanders through a virtual world where the
commander can literally 'see' how things might play
out. This process gives the commander a view of the most
likely strengths and weaknesses of any particular course of
action," write authors V.S. Subrahmanian
(http://www.cs.umd.edu/users/vs/), a Maryland computer
science professor and director of the University's Institute
for Advanced Computer Studies (UMIACS), and John Dickerson,
a UMIACS computer science researcher.
Computer scientists now know pretty much how to do this,
and have created a "pretty good chunk" of the computing
theory and software required to build a virtual Afghanistan,
Pakistan or another "world," explains Subrahmanian, who
notes that much of the leading edge of this work has been
done at the University of Maryland.
"Human analysts, with their real world knowledge and
experience, will be essential partners in taking us the rest
of the way in building these digital worlds and, then, in
using them to predict courses of action most likely to build
peace and security in Afghanistan and elsewhere."
In their Science "Perspectives" article Subrahmanian and
Dickerson note that researchers at the University of
Maryland have developed a number of the computing pieces
critical to building virtual worlds. These include
stochastic opponent modeling agents (SOMA) - artificial
intelligence software that uses data about past behavior of
groups in order to create rules about the probability of
that group various actions in different situations;
"cultural islands," which provide a virtual world
representation of a real-world environment or terrain,
populated with characters from that part of the world who
behave in accordance with a behavioral model; and
forecasting "engines" CONVEX and CAPE, which focus on
predicting behavioral changes in groups based on validated
on historical data.
Writing about virtual worlds that will be created in the
near future, he and Dickerson say that "U.S. defense
analysts can use such virtual worlds to interact with models
of the behaviors of these groups and understand how certain
actions they might take will affect the short-term and
long-term behaviors of these groups. At any given point in
time, the game has a 'state' describing, for instance, the
situation in a town. When U.S. forces or a local government
take actions such as opposing a local leader, that state is
altered. A group may react in one of several ways in
accordance with a [mathematically-based] probability
distribution."
"We are now at the point where, with the help of the
analysts, we can start thinking about building
computer-generated models that can automatically adapt to
changes in group behaviors and to conditions on the ground,"
Subrahmanian adds.
((AScribe - The Public Interest Newswire / http://www.ascribe.org))
[ Back To education 's Homepage ]
|
SUBSCRIPTIONS
TMCnet LOGIN
WEBINARS
