Transitional Online Post-Deployment Soldier Support in Virtual Worlds (TOPSS-VW)
TOPSS-VW also known as “Coming Home,” implements ICT’s intelligent virtual humans within a specialized online virtual world for the benefit of soldiers who are post deployment and reintegrating to civilian life. This is often a diffcult time for many soldiers due to both physical and psychological challenges. A virtual world can mitigate many of these issues by providing a dedicated space where soldiers can interact, find camaraderie, and connect to resources for healing and transition.
This space will contain a series of interactive Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM)-based interventions, designed in conjunction with appropriate medical experts. The virtual humans will serve as informed guides that maximize each veteran’s experience and help each person determine what might be of the most benefit to his or her situation.
This effort not only serves a valuable military purpose, it also expands current virtual world capabilities by making intelligent agents active participants of the world.
The project builds on two of ICT’s strengths: immersive games and virtual worlds expertise, and our virtual human intelligence research. Putting the virtual human intelligence capabilities into virtual world characters as autonomous intelligent agents enables better engagement and functionality for visitors to the veterans space. It expands online worlds by populating them with helper agents who can significantly enhance the player experience.
Our virtual world space is being designed as a connected social network where soldiers can find camaraderie with others who have gone through recent wartime experiences. We envision this environment serving a function similar to the twentieth century VFW Halls, where returning veterans benefit from the companionship of others who shared similar wartime experiences. Within this space are areas where soldiers can play games, find resources, and gather to talk.
The center of the veterans social space is Chicoma Lodge – specifically designed to be warm and inviting, patterned after National Park lodges of the West. The central area, the Great Hall, contains comfortable seating areas around fireplaces, and an inviting decor that includes hunting, skiing, cowboy and Native American motifs. There are two decks off the rear of this space, containing seating areas that afford views (and sounds) of a mountain waterfall, as well as wildlife indigenous to the area. Two large wings extending from the Great Hall are devoted to a wide range of games.
There are both enrichment and physically-based activities planned, as well as evidence-based therapeutic activities. As the use of a virtual space is primarily social in nature, it is something that soldiers can become involved with on many levels. By making the CAM interventions enjoyable as well as voluntary, we expect more people will take advantage of them.
Tags: environment, games, human, social, virtual
