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Where else but at USC could a three-way marriage between Hollywood, high-tech and the Army come off without a hitch?

IT SEEMED SOMEHOW FITTING that an actress who played a starship commander on television should pilot USC’s Institute for Creative Technologies into the bright glare of reporters’ cameras. With the Trojan Marching Band providing the fanfare, Kate Mulgrew of “Star Trek: Voyager” stood alongside then-Secretary of the Army Louis Caldera in September 2000 and dedicated the unconventional research entity headquartered in Marina del Rey, Calif.
The Army had given birth to the ICT in 1999 with a $45 million grant and a challenge to help prepare U.S. troops to make critical decisions through the development of advanced virtual reality and simulation technology. “This is about injecting more realism into our training,” Caldera said at the opening. “More realistic training saves soldiers.”


These “huddle rooms” and “cu-bunkles” serve as the backdrop for the creative fusion of military, multimedia and movie-making know-how that drives ICT.

Drawing on researchers from the USC School of Engineering, the USC School of Cinema-TV and the USC Annenberg School for Communication, ICT brings together the entertainment industry, with its expertise in story, character, visual effects and production; game developers, with their computer graphics and modeling resources; and computer scientists, with their expertise in networking, artificial intelligence and virtual-reality technology.
ICT’s oceanfront digs radiate a relaxed 21st-century ambiance. Crafted by renowned “Star Trek” designer Herman Zimmerman and architect Newell Arderich, the three-story space features doorless mini-offices, quiet areas, “huddle rooms” and privacy chambers. Individual offices, also known as pods or “cu-bunkles,” contain cushioned berths where researchers working into the night can grab a few hours sleep. The centerpiece is a pull-out-all-the-stops immersive theater with everything from 10.2-channel surround-sound to scent technology. The overall effect is more like a starship than a cubicle village, say ICT officials.
Mission Rehearsal is but one of a flurry of ICT projects underway here. Others include:
Experience Learning System (ELS) In a grand, five-pronged research effort, ICT experts are developing a new training system for the Army that will overcome severe limitations in current simulations affecting immersion, story,
artificial intelligence, characters, direction, setup, architecture and networking.
The Advanced Leadership Training Simulation (ALTSIM) Designed to replace the current means of training Army officers in the operation of a command post, this project transformed what used to be a scripted paper exercise into an Internet-ready, responsive, real-time simulation focused on decision-making.
Enhanced Narrative Command Level AAR Visual Environment (ENCLAVE) Sponsored by the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command, this project is aimed at developing methods and tools to explain what happened in a large-scale simulation, why it happened, and how it relates to the hypotheses of a study. ENCLAVE will automatically create story-based presentations by combining an automated storyteller with a human collaborator.
Supporting all these efforts is a tide of ICT-sponsored basic research into 3D immersive sensory environments – stimulating human senses such as vision, hearing, touch, smell and orientation so convincingly that the effects cannot easily be distinguished from reality.

Photographed by David Strick