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Special Interest Groups
The SimTecT 2000 Organising Committee has made arrangements for meetings related to special interests in the area of simulation technology and training. Attendance at these Special Interest Group (SIG) meetings is open to all conference delegates with key people from relevant fields of activity having been asked to provide topics for discussion. SIG meetings were as follows:
SIG 1. HLA & Distributed Simulation
Facilitator - Dr John Best
The HLA Special Interest Group meeting will focus on the question of what processes need to be put in place within Defence and Industry to gain maximum value from the High Level Architecture. Standardisation processes are expected to be high on the agenda, especially with regard to FOM's and data. Is there a requirement for joint Defence/Industry demonstrations to build on recent training initiatives and establish a baseline HLA capability within Australia? What systems engineering practices need to be adopted to enable synthetic environments in the air, maritime and land domains to be brought together to form a virtual battlespace?
The scene will be set with a series of presentations by significant stakeholders. Thereafter an open discussion will take place with a view to preparing a set of recommendations for presentation to the Australian Defence Simulation Office.
Download the HLA SIG Primer (14KB PDF File).
Download the HLA SIG SimTecT 2000 Outcomes report (14KB PDF File).
Dr John Best leads DSTO's Virtual Ship Project. Based in Maritime Operations Division (Salisbury), the project is drawing together the expertise of DSTO and industry to establish a comprehensive capability to simulate warship operations. The High Level Architecture provides the underlying means for linking simulation models.
In his capacity as leader of the Virtual Ship Project, Dr Best chairs the Virtual Ship Architecture Working Group (VSAWG). With membership across nine DSTO Divisions and ten defence companies, the VSAWG is working to establish the Virtual Ship Federation Object Model (VS-FOM) as a common reference for the maritime simulation community.
Through the VSAWG, the Virtual Ship Project is playing a leading role in facilitating the adoption of HLA within Australia. It has recently sponsored the conduct by DMSO of a Comprehensive Introduction to HLA course and Hand-on Practicum in HLA at DSTO Salisbury.
SIG 2. Situational Awareness
Facilitator - Dr Mick Millington
Situational awareness is a key goal of organisations as we enter the next millennium. For different organisations, situational awareness has different meanings. For the military, fully digital based operations will allow strategic, operational, and tactical level sensor and intelligence processing to be tied together. This will enable commanders to 'see the battlespace'; ie, to know what the terrain is like; to know where the enemy is and what he is doing; to know where friendly forces are. Hand-in-hand with seeing the battlespace will be the ability to make decisions and communicate those decisions faster than ever before.
A broader definition is: "Appreciation by the decision maker of the sum total of information available to make optimum decisions."
The Situational Awareness SIG will look at the key technologies that support situational awareness (such as data fusion, data correlation, visualisation), issues (such as joint services understanding and establishment of a joint scenario, common symbology, common language, quicktime wargaming), current research direction, and advances in these technologies. The ADF's plans for the digitisation of the battlefield in the 21st century will also be discussed.
The Situational Awareness SIG session will be facilitated by use of the Grouputer, a collaborative conferencing system that accelerates managing, learning and decision making.
Dr Mick Millington is Chief Scientist, Information & Communications Systems Division, Boeing Australia. In his role as Chief Scientist, Mick Millington's' responsibilities include the establishment and management of the Boeing Systems Analysis Laboratory.
His career in Defence commenced in 1965, and included an appointment as Deputy Director of the Submarine Warfare Systems Centre, and Project Manager for the upgrade to the RAAF F/A-18 Operational Flight Trainers.
Mick's qualifications include a PhD (Engineering), MBA (Technology Management) and a Bachelor of Engineering (Electrical).
SIG 3. Medical
Facilitator - Mr Mark Phillips
NOTE: The Medical SIG now forms part of the Medical Simulation Symposium held on Monday 28th February 2000.
Medical applications have many of the same criteria as other, more traditional applications of simulation technology: they are complex, training of "operators" is expensive, and there is a high consequence of failure. Recently, many of the technology issues associated with medical simulation have been overcome and medical applications are one of the high growth areas for simulation technology and tele-medicine. Recent improvements in simulation fidelity have led to acceptance of simulators as a valuable training tool, in particular for minimal access surgery. Imaging techniques are seen as a potentially rich source of data for the construction of accurate patient models.
The aim of this SIG is to bring together organisations and individuals (medical, engineering and scientific) who have an interest in the application of simulation technology to medical applications and to share their knowledge on this subject. This SIG covers the full spectrum of medical applications, including high level simulators where mocked-up operating theatres are used to recreate the surgical workplace, to part-task trainers which concentrate on a specific aspect, such as anaesthetist training.
Mr Phillips spent 18 months working with the Biomedical engineering unit at Canberra Hospital. His interest area was monitoring respiration using digital signal processing techniques. While working with Army (as the Technology Development Officer for simulation and training for Headquarters Training Command - Army) he has provided advice and guidance to Defence health services on medical modelling and simulation issues. This included advice to Joint Project 2060 and a brief on the future capability at the IX Asia Pacific Military Medical Conference Bangkok 1999. Mr Phillips is currently Simulation & Technology Consultant with Compucat.
SIG 4. Land Based Vehicle Simulation
Facilitator - Mr Rob Zeltzer
This SIG discusses the issues and special problems involved with land based vehicle simulation. These include: the need for motion bases; motion sickness; cost/feature tradeoffs; low-cost production techniques; useability; fidelity; human factors; learning cues and accreditation.
Rob Zeltzer is Senior Systems Architect with the Simulation Group of Tenix Defence Systems Pty Ltd where he is responsible for the system design of simulators for a variety of military and civilian applications.
Rob has over 25 years of experience in hardware and software development and systems engineering, particularly in defence and real time systems. He has particular expertise in the development of complex simulation systems, having been involved in large scale simulation of ships, helicopters and various aircraft.
One of Rob's current research interests is low cost, high fidelity simulation for land based vehicles.
SIG 5: Army Simulation Environment and Land 134 Combat Training Centre Instrumentation System
In conjunction with SimTecT 2000, and the Army Simulation SIG, Defence will be taking the opportunity to provide an update to Australian and international businesses who may be interested in this project.
The CTC may use a wide range of simulation training devices including: Equipment to simulate weapon capabilities, force on force control centre, data collection, analysis and debriefing, systems/software integration, and contractor logistic support.
Whilst noting that the project is still at the pre-approval stage and the requirement is still being formulated, Defence is seeking to keep industry informed of Land 134 developments. This will allow industry to be involved in all aspects of the project and can bring their considerable domain experience to the table.
All attendees will be advised that Land 134 is a not yet approved project, with there being no guarantee that Government will provide funding. Additionally they will be advised that the requirement and acquisition strategy are both in the formative stages and are subject to change.
Speakers from outside the Department of Defence are in no way endorsed by the Department.
TIMETABLE OF EVENTS
| Time |
Topic |
Presenter |
| 1500 |
General Introduction |
Simulation Industry of Australia Association Chairman or Technical Chair |
| 1505 |
Introduction to Army Simulation |
The Director of CATDC, LtCol John Loughhead |
| |
Army's LAND134 concept |
Project Sponsor, LtCol Jon Hill |
| |
Acquisition strategy and schedule |
Project Director Acquisition, Land 134 - LtCol Rohan Boyer |
| |
Australian industry objectives |
Director Industry (Electronic Systems) - Mr Tony Aird |
| 1600 |
Open Forum |
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