SBIR/STTR Award attributes
The safety and operational success of the U.S. Navy (USN) depends on expert navigation, seamanship, and shiphandling skills. Tragically, the Navy experienced four major incidents in 2017. The resulting USN Comprehensive Review identified lapses in basic seamanship and safe navigation skills as contributing factors, reinforcing the critical need for rigorous shiphandling training and proficiency assessment. Virtual Environment (VE) training provides a promising and cost-effective way to build such proficiency. While demand is high, VE training heavily relies on instructor coaching from master mariners. By developing more advanced intelligent tutoring systems (ITS) that augment this process, instructors can manage more student trainees and students can be exposed to a wider variety of task scenarios with tailored feedback. To address this, we propose to design and demonstrate a system for Mentoring and Responsive Learning through Intelligent Nautical Skill-modeling, Prompting, Intervention, and Feedback during Instructor-Controlled Exercises (MARLINSPIKE). MARLINSPIKE provides a skill-centered ITS framework for managing training based on real-time skill assessment through a combination of improved performance tracking, automated feedback, alerting methods, and automated assessment data capture for debriefings. The resulting system will increase the effectiveness and efficiency of VE-based training methods while reducing demands for instructors.
