Organizational Unit:
Modeling, Virtual Environments, and Simulation Institute (MOVES)

Date Established

2000

Description

Welcome to the Modeling Virtual Environments and Simulation (MOVES) Institute at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. MOVES is an interdisciplinary research and academic program dedicated to education and research in all areas of defense modeling and simulation and has a degree programs leading towards a Master of Science or Doctor of Philosophy in MOVES. The MOVES Institute has its roots in the NPSNET Research Group founded in 1986. NPSNET was the original low-cost, government-owned, SIMNET and DIS compatible visual simulator. It was widely used around the world and was integrated into many government programs over its lifetime. While MOVES was founded in 2000, MOVES as an academic program was founded in 1996 with the launch of the Master of Science program, followed by the Doctoral program in 1999. The Institute is intended to be a mix of the strong analysis tradition of the Operations Research Department and the simulation, training, and software development expertise of the Computer Science Department. Most notably, MOVES was the birthplace of America’s Army. Sponsored by the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army: Manpower and Reserve Affairs, America’s Army was our first venture into the use of video game technology for defense applications. Development has since left the Institute, but many millions of players have downloaded and played America’s Army since 2000.

Type

Institute

Website of the organization

https://nps.edu/web/moves

Full item page

Publication Search Results

Now showing 1 - 10 of 341

The Autonomous Unmanned Vehicle Workbench: Mission Planning, Mission Rehearsal, and Mission Replay Tool for Physics-based X3D Visualization
(2005-08) Davis, Duane; Brutzman, Don; Modeling, Virtual Environments, and Simulation Institute (MOVES)
In recent years, numerous military and civilian applications for autonomous underwater vehicles have been identified or proposed and a number of production and research vehicles have been developed to address many of these. However, the use of vehicle-specific data formats and mission planning systems hampers cooperative research efforts by fostering the implementation of stove-pipe systems. Additionally, the lack of physics-based playback and tightly coupled two- and three-dimensional (2D/3D) visualization environments typically precludes realistic mission rehearsal or high-fidelity playback.
Coalition Battle Management Language (C-BML) Study Group Final Report
(Simulation Interoperability Standards Organization, 2006-07-31) Galvin, Kevin; Hieb, Mike; Tolk, Andreas; Blais, Curtis; Montgomery, James; Modeling, Virtual Environments, and Simulation Institute (MOVES)
Interoperability across Modeling and Simulation (M&S) and Command and Control (C2) systems continues to be a significant problem for today's warfighters. M&S is well-established in military training, but it can be a valuable asset for planning and mission rehearsal if M&S and C2 systems were able to exchange information, plans, and orders more effectively. To better support the warfighter with M&S based capabilities, an open standards-based framework is needed that establishes operational and technical coherence between C2 and M&S systems.
Virtual reality and spatial ability
(IEEE, 2005-08-15) Kaufmann, Hannes; Rizzo, Skip; Kim, Gerard Jounghyun; Darken, Rudolph P.; Astur, Robert; Tendick, Frank; Modeling, Virtual Environments, and Simulation Institute (MOVES); Naval Postgraduate School (U.S.)
VR technology provides unique assets for assessing, training and rehabilitating spatial abilities. Its capacity for creating, presenting, and manipulating dynamic three-dimensional (3D) objects and environments in a consistent manner enables the precise measurement of human interactive performance with these stimuli. VE spatial ability testing and training systems may provide ways to target cognitive processes beyond what exists with methods relying on 2D pencil and paper representations of 3D objects (or methods using actual real objects) that are typically found with traditional tools in this area. Traditional methods are often limited by poor depth, motion, and 3D cues needed for proper stimulus delivery. In addition they have limited capacity for the precise measurement of responses. VR offers the potential to address these variables in an ecologically valid manner (functional simulations) without the loss of experimental control common with naturalistic studies in this area relying on observational methods.
Explicit Analytical Expression for a Lanchester Attrition-Rate Coefficient for Bonder and Farrell’s m-Period Target-Engagement Policy
(2001-07-09) Taylor, James G.; Neta, Beny; Modeling, Virtual Environments, and Simulation Institute (MOVES); Applied Mathematics (MA)
The purpose of this working paper is to give an explicit analytical expression for a Lanche s- ter-type attrition-rate coefficient for direct-fire combat in a heterogeneous-target environment with serial acquisition of targets for Bonder and Farrell’s m-period target-acquisition policy1. It develops this result (its main result) from Taylor’s [2001d] new important general result (that does not depend on the target-engagement policy of a firer type or even on the particulars of the target-acquisition process) for a Lanchester attrition-rate coefficient for serial acquisition by developing explicit ana- lytical expressions for the two key intermediate quantities on which the coefficient depends: namely, (1) expected time to acquire a target that will be engaged, (2) next-target-type-to-be-engaged probability. An analytical expression for the former quantity (the expect value) was recently developed by one of the authors (Taylor [2001e]), while the paper at hand develops such an expression for the latter probability. These two new important intermediate results have allowed us to develop the explicit analytical expression for a Lanchester attrition-rate coefficient for Bonder and Farrell’s target- acquisition policy via Taylor’s general expression for direct-fire combat in a heterogeneous-target environment with serial acquisition of targets. These analytical results are then verified against simulation results.
Simulation of Non-Combatant Population Movement in the Battlespace
(I/ITSEC, 2017) Cerri, Tony; Laster, Nicole; Hernandez, Alejandro (Andy); Hall, Steven B.; Sleevi, Neil F.; Johnson, Andrew; Modeling, Virtual Environments, and Simulation Institute (MOVES); Systems Engineering (SE)
The risk of adversaries instigating mass human migration, refugee flows and crowd formations in the battlespace1 requires mitigation because unexpected population movements can adversely impact the United States and partners’ freedom of operations abroad. As well, Information operations and physical events initiated by operations in an area may result in population activity patterns (second and third order effects/events). Even relatively small gatherings of non-combatants, especially at urban choke points can have repercussions impacting military operations which rely on predictable traffic flow on roads and infrastructure. Simulation in the field of Pattern of Life Analytics (PoLA) is critically important to the military because it may lead to improvements in predicting patterns of movement and other behaviors that are realistic, reliable, and repeatable among non-military populations. There is insufficient modeling of the political, economic and social conditions within the operational environment (OE) and their effects on combatants and noncombatants. Meanwhile, emerging connected device tracking technologies provide rich new data sources required to assess ongoing patterns of life activity levels (traffic patterns, work, shopping, pedestrian flow, refugee movement, crowd gatherings and so on). This paper describes a technique for representing migration of a civilian population in a way that is amenable to computation (i.e., simulation). The model firmly rooted in social science principles for: a) establishing a baseline of population location data, b) calculating populace mood changes based upon Political, Military, Economic, Social, Infrastructure, Information, Physical Environment, and Time (PMESII-PT) interventions, and c) forecasting timing and size of refugee flows and direction of their movements to, d) further model their external migration in Athena. As a result, the military decision makers can understand PMESII-PT impacts of non-combatant population movement in the battlespace. Lessons learned from this work could be used to simulate and predict non-combatant movement and identify potential impacts in the OE.
IED Prevention and Forensic Video Analysis
(Monterey, California. Naval Postgraduate School, 2010-07-13) Kölsch, Mathias; Modeling, Virtual Environments, and Simulation Institute (MOVES); Computer Science (CS)
Dynamically extending a networked virtual environment using Bamboo and the high level architecture
(Monterey, CA; Naval Postgraduate School, 1998-09) Liles, Stewart W.; Zyda, Michael J.; Darken, Rudolph P.; Modeling, Virtual Environments, and Simulation Institute (MOVES)
The design and execution of anetworked virtual environment(NVE) are challenging tasks madeeven more difficult by the fact thatNVEs are becoming more complexand difficult to manage. In adistributed environment, eachsimulation not only computes itsown behaviors and publishes themto the network, but it mustaccurately represent all otherentities participating in the NVE. Tosimplify this task, this thesisimplements method to makedistributed simulations dynamicallyextensible, flexible, specific, andconsistent. Bamboo provides theability to dynamically extend thevirtual environment by defining aconvention by which plug in modules can be added during simulation runtime. The HLA provides the network communication layer thattransports entity state updates toall members of the distributedsimulation. These two toolscombine to create a uniquesolution to problems inherent indesigning modem networkedvirtual environments. Theimplementation is dynamicallyextensible which increases theflexibility implementers have indesigning virtual environments.The HLA transports the entityupdates and the module name thatmust be used to represent the entity. This method allows programmers to design only their module because modules representing other entities will load as needed during the execution. This method of implementing virtual environments that promises to streamline the design and implementation process.
Tactical Mission Commander Drills Implementation
(Monterey, CA; Naval Postgraduate School, 2025-03-31) Fitzpatrick, Christian R.; Modeling, Virtual Environments, and Simulation Institute (MOVES); Computer Science (CS)
During Naval Special Warfare’s (NSW) Junior Officer Training Course (JOTC) Team Leaders are limited in the number of repetitions of mission rehearsals to hone their tactical decision-making skills during Ground Force Commander (GFC) Drills. Structured as table-top exercises, GFC Drills are used during and after JOTC to create environments for Team Leaders to make decisions in a tactical environment employing various assets, systems, and capabilities. Following the drill, there is an after-action review (AAR) process, but it is not sufficiently structured, so participants are receiving feedback that is non-standardized. This research improved GFC Drills through the analysis and refinement of requirements drafted to field a virtual training system. Our research team surveyed and assessed existing modeling and simulation (M&S) tools and reported on their ability to enhance the realism of GFC Drills. To identify the right tools, we studied the GFC training and readiness (T&R) objectives. This task analysis enabled our research team to map training requirements to the existing capabilities of constructive simulation systems and mixed reality (xR) displays. Our research was conducted in close coordination with NSW students from the Defense Analysis (DA) Department and there was an opportunity to integrate this work into the curriculum through guided discussions and technology demonstrations during DA4500, Special Topics in Strategic Analysis. Since this work was executed as a thesis or capstone project, we delivered a final report and presentation detailing our analysis and findings.
Delta3D: a complete open source game and simulation engine for building military training systems
(Society for Modeling and Simulation International, 2006-07) McDowell, Perry; Darken, Rudolph; Sullivan, Joe; Johnson, Erik; Modeling, Virtual Environments, and Simulation Institute (MOVES)
Semantic Web: Implications for Modeling and Simulation System Interoperability
(2004) Lacy, Lee W.; Blais, Curtis; Modeling, Virtual Environments, and Simulation Institute (MOVES)
One of the newest initiatives in the evolution of the World Wide Web (WWW) is the specification of standards and technologies to create the Semantic Web. Whereas most of today’s WWW is targeted primarily at human readers, the Semantic Web will support human readers while providing enriched data descriptions to enable software agents to perform automated reasoning, creating a Web of knowledge. In the Modeling and Simulation (M&S) domain, these emerging technologies offer opportunities to dramatically improve composability of functional capabilities and interoperability of systems, including interoperability between M&S and operational C4I systems.