The Nomination for Extending TACSI with Support for Group Behavior by Magnus Nordfeldt and Fredrik Skogman

The nominated thesis describes how a tactical air combat simulator, TACSI, can be extended with support for team behavior. TACSI is a simulator developed by SAAB for training fighter pilots. Before this work all the simulated airplanes acted independently. The thesis propose and implements an extension where the team behavior of a group of airplanes can be described and simulated based on existing work in the area. The main contribution of the thesis is the integration of existing AI technology in a commercial system. The nominated students managed both to extend the TACSI simulator and develop scenarios where they demonstrate the value of their extension. The work was performed at SAAB Aerosystems AB in Linköping.

The thesis deserves the award because it manages to take existing theoretical work in the area of multi-agent systems and successfully integrate and implement it in an existing commerical simluation system. The thesis also shows that AI technology is useful in industrial applications.

Fredrik Heintz