If your close combat simulation droid isn’t chatty enough, the UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) has your back. It’s awarded a contract to combat training specialist company 4GD to add ChatGPT language models to its SimStriker robot targets.
With the development of missiles, drones, robots, and remote sensors, it’s easy to imagine that modern soldiers spend all their time sitting in front of screens and never come into personal contact with the enemy. In reality, modern warfare has resulted in infantry and special forces in urban settings coming into very close quarters with hostile forces.
Such warfare requires intense specialized training because a soldier in a very unfamiliar and confined space is called upon to make split-second decisions, often based on incomplete information. This means not only completing the mission, but maintaining the safety of the combat group, as well as being able to separate the enemy from civilians and hostages, and telling real casualties from those lying doggo for an ambush.
This training relies on constant practice in a variety of scenarios with varying degrees of realism until reactions become a matter of reflex and muscle memory rather than conscious decision. That, in turn, means that the practice environment must sometimes be very realistic indeed.
4GD
4GD’s SimStriker has been in development since 2020 and is a system of sensors and interactive targets in maze-like corridors and rooms. To date, the facility has been used by the British Army’s 16 Air Assault Brigade in Colchester, as well as the Air Assault Brigade, the Essex Police, and the MoD police.
Though the SimStriker targets look like high-tech tailor’s dummies, they are motorized and include hit sensors to record the precision and fire rates of participating soldiers. In addition, they can detect movement, light, and sound. They can also respond verbally, raise the alarm, and return fire with non-lethal weapons.
So far, so realistic, but the MoD, through the Defence and Security Accelerator (DASA), wants to add OpenAI’s ChatGPT system to make things even more real by giving the targets the means to carry on what is called ‘synthetic conversations’ with the soldiers and their equipment, such as through social media feeds. In this way, training sessions can be more varied, dynamic and immersive, as well as providing training supervisors with a wider variety of bespoke scenarios.
“We are excited about the latest stage in the development of SimStriker,” said James Crowley, 4GD Business Development Director. “This contract award from DASA is proof that, in conjunction with our industry partners, 4GD continues to adapt our solutions to achieve the best training outcomes. 4GD’s flagship SmartFacility was designed to bring realism to military training simulations and utilizing AI adds another dimension of reality to urban warfare scenarios.”
Source: 4GD
