Project TARGET

A new European Union research and innovation project, TARGET (Training Augmented Reality Generalised Environment Toolkit) was successfully launched in May 2015. The project, bringing together the expertise of 16 organisations, will jointly deliver a pan-European serious gaming platform featuring new tools, techniques and content for training and assessing skills and competencies of Security Critical Agents (SCAs), including counterterrorism units, border guards and first responders (police, firefighters, ambulance services, civil security agencies or critical infrastructure operators).

From 3-5 June 2015, representatives from the security and defence industry, from research and academia, SMEs, end-users and several European institutions, from 10 EU member states, will come together in Paris to launch the project. TARGET will receive nearly 6€ million in funding from the European Commission under the Horizon 2020 Framework Programme throughout its three year duration, from May 2015 to April 2018.

Mixed-reality experiences will immerse trainees at operational, tactical and strategic command levels with scenarios that will include tactical firearms events, asset protection, mass demonstrations, cyber-attacks and CBRN incidents. Trainees will use real / training weaponry, radio equipment, command & control software, decision support tools, real command centres and vehicles. Social and ethical content will play an important role throughout all aspects of the project. If real-source information is not available, it will be substituted by AVR (Augmented /Virtual Reality - multimedia, synthetic role players). TARGET will deliver an extremely realistic and flexible AVR simulation solution incorporating a range of dynamic and variable scenarios. The final outcome will be a highly immersive training solution, resulting in superior and more effective training experiences for SCAs. The distributed Open TARGET Platform will provide extensible standards- driven methods to integrate simulation techniques and AVR technology with existing SCA training equipment and be customisable to local languages, national legal contexts, organisational structures, established standard operational procedures and legacy IT systems. At key training points real-time benchmarking of individuals and teams will be instrumented. TARGET will support inter-agency SCA exercising across the EU and act as a serious gaming repository and brokerage facility for authorised agencies to share training material and maximise reuse and efficiency in delivering complex exercises.

TARGET, combining training, content and technology expertise, will be co-led by users and technologists, mainly SMEs. Two successively developed and trialled versions of the TARGET Solution will support user-technologist dialogue. The TARGET Ecosystem will enable sustainable impact, commercial uptake and synergies at EU level.

Contact Information

Mario Rogus
phone: +49 (0) 3301 850-2555
email: mario.rogus [at] hpolbb.de

For further information: target-coordinator [at] eurtd.com

ARTTIC (Project Coordinator)

Christian Baumhauer: target-arttic [at] eurtd.com

VectorCommand Limited (Technical Coordinator)

Mike Griffin: mike.griffin [at] vectorcommand.com

Consortium organisations in alphabetical order: