Learning tactical human behavior through observation of human performance

Abstract

It is widely accepted that the difficulty and expense involved in acquiring the knowledge behind tactical behaviors has been one limiting factor in the development of simulated agents representing adversaries and teammates in military and game simulations. Several researchers have addressed this problem with varying degrees of success. The problem mostly lies in the fact that tactical knowledge is difficult to elicit and represent through interactive sessions between the model developer and the subject matter expert. This paper describes a novel approach that employs genetic programming in conjunction with context-based reasoning to evolve tactical agents based upon automatic observation of a human performing a mission on a simulator. In this paper, we describe the process used to carry out the learning. A prototype was built to demonstrate feasibility and it is described herein. The prototype was rigorously and extensively tested. The evolved agents exhibited good fidelity to the observed human performance, as well as the capacity to generalize from it.