Hello, This is my first post to this forum, and i must admit that I'm pretty much a noob in AI forums. Having that said, I'm a master student and have had classes in AI - covering A*, different searches, csp problems, neural networks and all that. My problem is this: None of that can tell my how I program a character to have a realistic behaviour (think of the grunts in half-life or operation flashpoint and multiply it with 100). Therefore, I need what I call Artificial Behaviour, which I'm writing my master theisis on now. The aim of my project (being an ex army-officer-candidate) is to have a person who pretty much behaves like a soldier, fresh out of bootcamp, including all the squad tactics, formations and simple communication - all modeled 100% according to the field manuals. I've implemented approx. half of the actions and tactics I want to cover, so all you guys who are already thinking of writing that it cant be done, can stop flaming me he he What I need is some solid theory regarding the overall simulator. how should actions triggered by vision or hearing be handled compared to actions determined by orders or main objectives, and so on. What I have now is working, and it is working pretty good. I just have a feeling that there's been a lot of reasearch in this area and that i'm doing that reasearch all over again So, here's my questions: anyone know of papers, books, websites concerning simulation of complex human behaviour - not using neural networks or techniques like that. more specific: human behaviour able to simulate out-of-a-manual like behaviour - much like a recipe - eksamples are first aid, army tactics, basically anything that is formal described. ********* edited: I need more than just a link to "AI wisdom" on amazon.com ********* Thanks, Ulf Livoff Technical University of Denmark [edited by - UlfLivoff on February 12, 2003 3:42:41 PM]

quote: Original post by UlfLivoff

My problem is this: None of that can tell my how I program a character to have a realistic behaviour
(think of the grunts in half-life or operation flashpoint and multiply it with 100).

FWIW, this is a very hard problem, so don''t expect any easy answers if you are really seeking realistic behavior .

quote:
The aim of my project (being an ex army-officer-candidate) is to have a person who pretty much behaves like a soldier, fresh out of bootcamp, including all the squad tactics, formations and simple communication - all modeled 100% according to the field manuals.

I just did this for a project for the US Army training of infantry company commanders in MOUT environments. Do a google search on Full Spectrum Command . I did months of research and found literally tons of information, all very overwelming, and only partially implementable.

quote:
I''ve implemented approx. half of the actions and tactics I want to cover, so all you guys who are already thinking of writing that it cant be done, can stop flaming me he he

Hey, I''ve done it. If one has unlimited funding and unlimited development time and unlimited processor power, one can do anything. Then again, if one must develop within the constraints of a deliverable product on today''s current hardware, then compromises must be made.

quote:
What I need is some solid theory regarding the overall simulator.
how should actions triggered by vision or hearing be handled compared to actions determined by orders or main objectives, and so on.

There is a large body of work out on the web covering behavior simulation of computer generated forces that can be found with some judicious searching using google.

quote:
So, here''s my questions: anyone know of papers, books, websites concerning simulation of complex human behaviour - not using neural networks or techniques like that.

Learn to use google. You will find that it has more of a chance to give you answers than posting requests like this in a discussion forum.

quote:
more specific: human behaviour able to simulate out-of-a-manual like behaviour - much like a recipe - eksamples are first aid, army tactics, basically anything that is formal described.

I did not find any recipe like examples. I found theory. I found research results. I found "lessons learned" from real-life AARs. Basically, this is a real "breaking new ground" concept when related to simulating military-like behavior in NPCs.

quote:
edited: I need more than just a link to "AI wisdom" on amazon.com

Actually, William Van Der Stern (I hope I got his name right) wrote some good stuff on small unit tactics in AI Wisdom that is well worth looking at.

Good luck,

Eric

Thanks for the quick reply, Eric

I know it's all about learning to use google

Therefore I need excactly what you gave me:
Keywords and names, to use on Google, that i woulnd't have thought up myself.

What I meant with "recipy" is this:

The *behaviour* I simulate is in a way similar to following a recipy.
In "first aid" you start like this; 1. check for coinciousness
(ehhh english is not my native toungue)
2. Do XXX

this is like "1. break two eggs and put them in a bowl"

It would be almost impossible to simulate correct first aid with, for instance, neural networks, but pretty easy (on a concept level) to do it with this discrete, deterministic, if-then (recipy) approach.

Do you mean that there is a system that simulates complete infantry tactics and behaviour in a correct way as described in the field manuals ? (on private and sergeant level?)

(of course I know that you cant simulate *everything* a private is able to do, but I mean the specific skills thaught in classes - like throwing a grenade.)

I have looked at systems like the operation flashpoint-based virtual battlefield system (VBS1), used by US Marines, and even that system doesn't simulate correct infantry behaviour (from what I can see on their webpage). That systems focus is small units tactics, so if they don't do it, who does?

Is there a name of the system you can give me ?

***
edit: ok, i see it now "Full Spectrum Command"
It's late here ...
***

I have also researched the public NATO archives (most abstracts are public) - and from what I seen, there's not a lot of documents or documented projects covering this.

What I thought of is that a lot of FPS, like operation flashpoint, Rogue Spear etc. has modelled a person with senses, available actions, objectives and so on, and built that into one agent or person. If there was some documentation of a smart way to do this, or just one way to do it, then I would be able to compare it to my approach - giving me some hints or at least confidence.

It's not easy researching high-tech military gaming technology, everything is pretty much as secret as it gets!

I will read AI wisdom - as soon as my university library gets it

Thanks again for your very useful comments.

Ulf Livoff

p.s. I know this is breaking new ground, that's why I'm doing it

[edited by - UlfLivoff on February 12, 2003 7:45:07 PM]

I'm glad my response helped you some.

Yes, google and learning how to use it, is the key to getting detailed information on AI. Since only you can know how applicable specific data is to your needs, it means that you must do the research yourself. Anyway, I have found google to be the single most valuable tool I have.

You also might check out my article Goal Directed Behavior using Composite Tasks when it appears in AI Wisdom 2 later this summer for ideas about how to handle "receipes". Or, search google for "goal directed behavior" and learn how it can simplify and add flexibility to receipe-like behavior.

Good luck,

Eric


[edited by - Geta on February 13, 2003 10:14:44 AM]

What you need here is information about behavioural artificial intelligence.. so check out many works on that subject, like the work of Arkin and Brooks. In their works you will find more references.
Remember that this subject is at forefront of the research, so dont''t expect to enter in a quiet and already-made world.

Regards and good luck!

Fire burn wisdom in me,
Wisdom set mind and spirit free,
Moonlight shows me the mysteries of life,
Winternight gives me clearsight and storms to fight.

I suppose the guys who did the halo AI could teach a thing or 2.
This helped me do some little AI things.

Click me to see

-------------------------------
So, rather than a simple answer, I am to infer that either:

a) you don''t know the answer
b) you didn''t understand the question
c) you are a large penis

Thanks for the links and the name-dropping, it''s all very welcome!

Actually, the title of my project is "simulation of human behaviour" - meaning that the system should be able to handle any specific, formal described behaviour. As an example of the system, I''m implementing complete infantry behaviour, squad tactics and so on.

A few interesting points has appeared with this "recipy" approach:

In my system almost all actions has running time O(1) (constant time), meaning that a 100% by-the-book accurate infantry ambush on a tank, takes up just about zero cpu-time.

This means that the system can simulate battles with thousands and thousands of soldiers - each showing correct military behaviour.

All actions tactics are implemented (generic) as they are written in the manuals - Say good bye to complex scripting.

this makes way for random mission generation in an operation flashpoint-like game in seconds. example: just define a random environment and some random objectives for our soldier, and thats it.

In the environment, bases comes with patrolling guards, medics, jeeps etc. All that that needed scripting until now, is built in in the behaviour-engine. Parts of this is seen before (gunship 2000 on the amiga is one example), but never on this level.

I hope this will lead the way to some really interesting games and simulation systems in the future.

if anyone else is working with this, you are welcome to (continue to) share your experiences here or drop me a mail.

Best regards
Ulf Livoff

this topic is completly beyond me, but i can recommend a search site for academic papers etc..

try... http://citeseer.nj.nec.com/cs

quote: Original post by UlfLivoff
In my system almost all actions has running time O(1) (constant time), meaning that a 100% by-the-book accurate infantry ambush on a tank, takes up just about zero cpu-time.

I am curious as to what your reference is for 100% by-the-book accurate infantry ambush tactics? Can you post a URL or a book title or other resource? As I mentioned upthread, I recently completed a project for the US Army that had as its behavior control as much by-the-book behavior as I could find. Some of my sources were public while others classified. I''m interested in what you found.

Thanks,

Eric

That is a very good question!

Getting access to these manuals and tactics showed to be much harder than I anticipated.

Since i served in the army 2000-2001, most of my work so far is based on the tactics I learned during that period.
realizing that that would not be good enough in the long run, my master thesis is made in cooperation with the army as well, so that will give me access to these manuals.

It''s pretty normal in scandinavia that master students can make university projects with the departments of defence.

The manuals I''m going to use is the standard bootcamp manuals used by privates and sergents. These are not public, and can not be accessed by ordinary civilians. (not in Denmark anyway)

My aim is not to turn this in to a top-secret project, but more like a operation-flashpoint style simulator - only more realistic.

The tank simulator/computer game "steal beasts" is also what I call 100% accurate, and is used by several NATO forces as training tool, including US and Denmark (according to a newspaper article i read) My project will be a similar declassified system, but based on some classified manuals.

I started looking at public ''manuals'' like first aid manuals to get a picture of the behaviour I want to simulate. After that, it''s pretty easy to use other manuals instead.

Of course there''s some limitations in the simulation.
when my soldier reloads, I don''t simulate the 10+ actions it might take to reload, but treats that as one action (for the moment, anyway)- still, in the big picture I consider the final behaviour accurate.

I think it would be cool if operation flashpoint had some tutorial-like missions where the player should learn to make an ambush by the book, assault from an apc etc. etc. so that is some of the aspects I will include in my system.

of course, there is some ethical questions - as well as security questions - having a computergame designed as a military training simulator, so I guess the ''worst'' parts will be classified, and I will turn the rest of the system into a computer game in a couple af years.

I hope that answers your question

Ulf Livoff