You just received a call about an active shooter situation unfolding at the local movie theater. As your partner speeds toward the scene, you sit in the passenger seat of the patrol car, wracking your brain, trying to prepare. You trust every officer in your department – everyone is experienced and quick on their feet – but none of you have trained for this kind of event before. You can only hope the skills you’ve learned on the job will help save lives.
Many agencies feel it’s impossible to train for every type of crisis response scenario possible, like the one above, particularly if resources are limited. Whether it’s a budget constraint, a lack of training locations or concerns about the technical skills needed to conduct more advanced simulations, these challenges have prevented officers from preparing for a range of emergencies.
Yet as technology has continued to advance, some departments are embracing virtual reality (VR) as a way to expand their training opportunities. Some solutions are difficult to implement, though, with limited simulation options and officers left feeling more like the training is a video game rather than a practical exercise.
V-Armed is aiming to change that. Born from a decades-old organization specializing in 3D animation and motion capture, the company formed in 2017 and specializes in law enforcement and military training solutions. The result is a system that provides agencies with comprehensive, immersive VR training for nearly any scenario an officer can imagine.
Solving the location problem
Law enforcement agencies are often challenged when it comes to finding places to conduct training – even large metropolitan departments like the NYPD.
“Our difficulty was finding the right locations to train in that were challenging and would meet the threat picture of what we were seeing at the time, which was active shooter situations,” said Raymond McPartland, chief of operations and training at V-Armed. During his 24-year career with the NYPD, McPartland spent 18 years as the lead trainer in the agency’s counterterrorism division.
“I wanted to get different locations that you can train in and be challenged by – something like a movie theater,” he said. “With VR, I can populate it with 100 civilian avatars and not only train officers on the mechanics and strategy but also desensitize them to the event so they could think more quickly compared to never having seen that situation before.”
This ability to enter a situation prepared can make a life and death difference, making it crucial for agencies using VR training to have the option to craft their training programs exactly how they see fit.
“We’re not trying to force the agency to fit into our tools,” said Paul Grajek, V-Armed’s chief marketing officer. “We’re adapting to fit their needs.”
V-Armed provides departments with a library of generic locations but also partners with agencies to create custom scenarios, whether it be a church, school or the local county courthouse. Custom weapons can also be developed.
“You’re able to go above and beyond what you can normally do in a practical setting,” explained Grajek. “You’re able to place participants in the actual setting. They begin to operate normally as if they were out in the field and aren’t wasting brain power trying to imagine that they’re there.”
Within each scenario are a number of additional features that add to the realism of the exercise. Realistic civilian avatars can be generated along with automatic triggers as various problems present themselves. Furthering the immersion is the ability to include smells – for example, an ammonia scent accompanying a drug lab exercise can help officers feel like they are truly in that environment.
Raising the stakes even more, training instructors can layer vibration or electrostimulation in instances where shots are fired and the participant needs to receive impact from that.
“The instructors can go as in-depth or as high-level as they want,” said Grajek. “With any robust tool, it’s going to take time to know every single feature from top to bottom, but that just means there are endless possibilities with what you can do with it.”
Making the training count
Agencies using VR training solutions may have the advantage of preparing for a wide range of scenarios, but what happens inside the exercise is just as important as the exercise itself. Headset-based solutions can only track basic head movements as officers progress through a scenario, leaving training instructors with little data to work with during after-action reviews.
“We use a very high-level tracking system to physically track the body and we combine it with computer software that can understand, calibrate and record it down to submillimeter accuracy,” said McPartland.
“Many systems out there are not using a very precise measurement tool as far as what the weapons are doing and how they’re handled and discharged,” added Grajek. “They’re also not really measuring what the entire body is doing. Where are your feet positioned outside of a door? What did your hands do?”
It’s not just head-to-toe physical movements that are captured during immersive training scenarios, as biometric data is also measured.
“You could look at stress level, you could look at cognitive load,” said McPartland. “Maybe we want to speed up their thinking and processing so an incident doesn’t last three minutes, it lasts a minute and a half, and a minute and a half in policing is life and death.”
V-Armed allows for instant correction during training, as officers can redo a scenario right away if the instructor notices a problem. This repeatable, measurable method helps to uncover trends and ensure officers are following department procedures and meeting training objectives.
Scalable for all agencies
From solutions designed to accommodate 10 officers at one time to smaller systems that fit inside a small conference room, V-Armed tailors its training platform to meet specific agency needs. A mobile version of the system is also available, allowing an officer to put it in the back of their squad car and conduct remote training.
No technical skill is needed to implement V-Armed, as the company works hand in hand with agencies to import their current training scenarios as well as build custom exercises. The platform uses drag and drop functionality, and up to five days of on-site practical training is provided to get departments up and running.
Today’s threats are becoming more complex and training for such events is critical. VR training like V-Armed provides officers with the tactical and stress preparation they would experience in the field without requiring sophisticated locations.
“My goal is that you get out of it, wipe your brow a little bit and get a little sweat off of you and say, ‘Wow, that was intense,’” said McPartland.
Visit V-Armed for more information.
