Central Fla. school promotes advanced simulation studies.

A perceived shortage of scientific and technical talent in the fields of modeling and simulation has led to the creation of an advanced academic program at the University of Central Florida.

The director of the project said he hopes that a new Ph.D. program will help strengthen the nation's pool of scientists that strictly focus on modeling and simulation disciplines.

"We're working to put the study of modeling and simulation onto a more scientific foundation," said Randall Shumaker, director of the University of Central Florida's Institute for Simulation and Training, based in Orlando. Shumaker was previously superintendent of the information technology division at the Naval Research Laboratory, and served as its chief information officer. While he was at the Naval Research Laboratory, Shumaker led an effort to incorporate virtual reality programs into decision systems.

This year, the University of Central Florida became one of the first universities in the country to offer advanced degrees in modeling and simulation, according to Shumaker.

Other existing graduate programs in simulation in the United States are at the Naval Postgraduate School, in Monterey, Calif., and Old Dominion University, in Norfolk, Va., but they are administrated through engineering departments. The Institute for Simulation and Training is a standalone entity.

Forty students entered the Ph.D. program this fall, and the university is also offering master's degree coursework in modeling and simulation. The program brings together diverse disciplines, including industrial engineering, computer science and engineering, human factors psychology, mathematics, statistics and digital media.

In recent years, Shumaker said, central Florida has increasingly become a technology corridor for military research in the field of modeling and simulation. The institute is located in the same research park as the Naval Air Warfare Center Training Systems Division; the U.S. Army Simulation; Training and Instrumentation Command (STRICOM); the Air Force Agency for Modeling and Simulation, and the Marine Corps modeling and simulation liaison office.

The Army and Navy both have major installations in central Florida. Eighty percent of the business of the institute comes from the military, said Shumaker. Last year, it won more than $8 million in sponsored research funding, he added.

According to the university's Web site, the simulation industry contributes 25,000 direct jobs, another 25,000 indirect jobs and $1.5 billion to the local economy of central Florida. The graduate program in modeling and simulation is expected to attract a large part-time population of working professionals from the region.

The University of Central Florida was originally founded as a technical school, to support government projects of the Kennedy Space Center, as well as the entertainment industry, dominated by Disney and Universal Studios in Orlando.

The school has 39,000 students. In addition to the university's Institute for Modeling and Simulation, which was opened in 1982, the school also offers advanced coursework in the related fields of digital and dynamic media. Several junior colleges in the area provide associate's degrees in modeling and simulation, and the region is also home to a high-school internship program in the field.

"This area is really a hotbed in the modeling and simulation world," Shumaker said.

The Institute for Simulation and Training is now the largest program of its kind in the country. It has 135 staff members, including students. The institute is cleared to work on U.S. government projects at the classified secret level.

Technology Advancement

A byproduct of advances in the field of modeling and simulation is the disappearance of formerly essential technology such as wind tunnels. "They're disappearing because the modeling and simulation of computational fluid dynamics is such that you don't need the physical wind tunnels anymore," Shumaker said.

The institute also is conducting research in the areas of multi-resolution simulation, connectivity, high-level simulation architecture, computer graphics, virtual environments and advanced distributed learning.

Some of the projects that the institute is currently working on involve robotics. Robots are important, because "they can interact with people and with other robots in reasonable ways," said Shumaker. "Say you're a Marine working with a search robot. You don't want to have to write code to get it to do something; you want to have a similar level of interaction. Commands can be given verbally or with hand gestures," he said.

"One of the things people want to do in the training world is to represent human behavior," he said. The goal is to act as a human being with a specific kind of training. That objective has not yet been reached, he said.

"No one really knows how to do that. We can build realistic synthetic vehicles, but we're trying to represent human behavior and express that in modern ways," Shumaker said.

"I think robots, as a representation of semiautonomous systems, are the wave of the future for certain applications," he said. "But they are not yet autonomous. People have to understand their utility, that they can behave in reasonable ways with people and be able to communicate at a high level," he said.

Shumaker said that the institute does a lot of business with the military services, but also works closely with the entertainment industry. "There's a interesting linkage," between military and entertainment because, "the military is interested in what the entertainment world is doing. The entertainment industry has learned how to give you intense experiences, and how to make you feel things that may not be real. That technology can enhance the military environment," he said.

One project being worked on at the institute is a virtual rainforest. The institute is home to the Virtual Environment Testbed, which enables researchers to evaluate and compare the effectiveness of various systems. "We are experimenting with using immersion techniques. Using virtual reality, you can see what a rainforest looks like from various perspectives," Shumaker said.

Shumaker noted that the Naval Research Lab does a lot of work in the area of virtual reality, "but it's much more in the basic research end, so we incorporate the more applied" aspects, he said.

Virtual reality is important, because it rakes the place of more expensive, on-site training. "A main focus of this institute has been training," said Shumaker. An example is that the Navy has just signed a contract with the institute to build so-called "battle stations." Battle stations will work "to give them confidence that the training they have has been useful, but in a safe and controlled environment. It's going to be a facility that gives a sailor a realistic shipboard experience, but on dry land," he said.

However, "the military is interested in how modeling and simulation might evolve for much more than just training," Shumaker said.

Dynamic media, a study that focuses on the interaction of people with synthetic experiences, offers new avenues for technological advancement.

Simone, a recently released movie about an actress entirely simulated by computer, "is kind of a prototype," Shumaker said. The institute is closely looking at "incorporating computer technology into entertainment," he said.

The fact that the modeling and simulation shops at Disney and Universal Studios are located within about 25 minutes of the institute makes it easy to collaborate and conduct joint research projects, he said.

Various modeling and simulation companies, in recent years, have stepped forward to offer scholarships to students working on relevant projects at the institute. Most recently, Simulation First LLC has funded an annual gift of $1,000, which will be awarded to a full-time graduate student in modeling and simulation.

Simulation First plans to "bring scholarship winners to commercial courses and get them involved in industrial activities beyond their coursework and research. This is something we can do to promote the advancement of simulation technology for the good of the entire community," said Roger Smith, Simulation First's president.