The Universidad Católica San Antonio de Murcia (UCAM) is leading VIRTACTIC, a project to build an immersive tactical-medical training system for combat scenarios. It is carried out under an R&D services contract from the Spanish Ministry of Defence's Directorate General for Defence Industry Strategy and Innovation (DIGEID). The system is still to be developed; the project has held its kick-off meeting and is planned to run until June 2029.
The stated objective is to improve decision-making and operational performance of healthcare and non-healthcare personnel in high-intensity combat scenarios. Results are intended to be dual-use, serving both Defence and civilian emergency services.
Planned system
The work is organised in four technology blocks:
- Digital twins and 360-degree immersive scenarios that recreate real spaces through digital capture, with spatial audio and branching decision-making.
- A multiplayer XR platform with medic, assistant and instructor roles, voice communication and remote supervision, running on standalone XR headsets.
- Adaptive AI virtual agents that adjust difficulty to each trainee and provide performance dashboards.
- Psychophysiological evaluation and clinical validation with emergency professionals, including a pilot in a military environment.
A prototype test published by the project shows a VR headset paired with a haptic vest, which will be used in the project.
Consortium
- UCAM: project lead.
- Skylife Engineering: develops the multiplayer XR platform.
- Mirlo Blanco Health Care: develops the AI virtual agents and the difficulty-adaptation algorithms.
- FINBA (Asturias biomedical research foundation): designs the clinical evaluation and analyses cognitive and psychophysiological variables.
- Emergency and Health Emergency Management 061 of the Región de Murcia: contributes operational experience in selecting and validating scenarios.
- Universidad de Murcia: technical collaboration on laboratory analyses.
Project head Manuel Pardo Ríos describes VIRTACTIC as the natural evolution of the group's earlier work in NATO and METASALUD.
