Researchers at the U.S. Army Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory in Hanover are creating a simulator to teach soldiers how to handle army vehicles on rough terrain, according to Barry Coutermarsh, research engineer for the project. The team hopes to decrease the number of military vehicle accidents, a leading cause of death for U.S. soldiers, by "teaching youngsters how to drive," he said.
Researchers developed Synthetic Automotive Virtual Environments to prepare soldiers how to handle vehicles with high centers of gravity on rough terrain, Coutermarsh said in a radio interview with Armed with Science.
The high centers of gravity on military vehicles result in a "high rate of deaths from rollover accidents in the military," Coutermarsh said.
Researchers are also investigating how military vehicles behave on unpaved roads another factor that contributes to military vehicle accidents, Coutermarsh told Armed with Science.
"There hasn't been a lot of work out there done on looking at how a vehicle operates on loose, unpaved surfaces," he said. "Our work is focused on how wheeled vehicles behave on gravel, loose stones, mud, snow and ice because these are the types of surfaces where the military vehicles frequently operate."
The simulator will teach military drivers how to handle their vehicles under adverse conditions to avoid accidents, Sally Shoop, co-project manager of the SAVE program, said in the Armed with Science radio interview.
"We're really trying to get at training that relates to good control of the vehicle, and a lot of the simulators that are out there both in the commercial world and in the military, too are geared toward situational awareness and what to do in a vehicle if certain things happen," Shoop said. "This is aimed more toward training people how to really control a vehicle when they get in a bad situation."
The simulator also holds the promise of mobility, Shoop said.
"You could put this in a trailer, you could drive it around to different bases, people could use it before they're deployed, they could sit in it and run through various tests," she said.
The ultimate goal of the project is to teach vehicle control that comes from muscle memory, Countermarsh said in the radio interview.
"[Drivers] can learn how much they can turn and how fast they can turn, and how to use the throttle and the brake and the steering to make the vehicle do what they want it to do," he said.
The simulator integrates visual and auditory cues as part of vehicle behavior to teach vehicle management to drivers, Shoop said.
SAVE's visual training, which is still under development, will teach drivers to look at their open pathways rather than obstacles to avoid accidents, Shoop said. The auditory component, which simulates the sound of tires on various terrains, is not yet fully integrated, according to Shoop.
Coutermarsh and Shoop will eventually research the long-term training necessary for soldiers to maintain the skills they acquire in the simulator, Coutermarsh said in the radio interview.
The project is still in development, and researchers are seeking funding to ensure the simulators are employed in the field, Coutermarsh said.
"If we don't get funding, it's going to go nowhere in the future," he said.
