Symetrix gear is used to coordinate IED military audio simulation at the Mobile Counter-Improvised Explosive Device Interactive Trainer to train soldiers in the intricacies of bomb avoidance, recognition and detonation.

The Mobile Counter-Improvised Explosive Device Interactive Trainer (MCIT ) helps to train American fighters to recognize what is arguably their greatest threat in modern theaters of battle: the improvised explosive device, or IED. Using sophisticated A/V technology, soldiers and officers learn about IEDs, their components, the ways they are deployed, and the clues to recognizing them in the field. Then, using cutting-edge interactive gaming technology, they partake in a simulation that pits a “red team” of insurgents against a “blue team” on patrol. The Symetrix Automix 780 and SymNet DSP units play an integral role in the MCIT, delivering both conditioned, matrixed audio and, for the simulation, “party line” routing and conditioning for the participants’ intercom systems, as well as appropriately-routed simulation audio.

The military’s Central Command, together with the Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization Joint Center of Excellence, ordered the creation and defined the goals of the MCITs. They contracted University of Southern California think tank, The Institute for Creative Technologies (ICT), to design and develop the content and substance of the MCITs. Isolated Ground, a Los Angeles-based set design firm was brought in to fabricate the MCITs. Isolated Ground hired Technical Multimedia Design of Montrose, California to both design and install the A/V components.

Each MCIT is composed of four mobile, self-contained, forty-foot Conex shipping boxes. They can be moved and used virtually anywhere there is a tennis-court-sized area in which to place them (using either local or generator power). Currently three MCIT systems exist, one at Ft. Bragg, North Carolina, one at Camp Pendleton in California and a third “final prototype” at Camp Shelby in Mississippi. The organizations and companies are currently in negotiation for the construction of additional units for deployment around the country and around the world.

ICT wrote the software for the game, which is based on the VBS2 game engine. A SymNet Express 12x4 Cobra coordinates dialog among and between the teams. Every participant wears a headset, and the SymNet unit is programmed so that members of the same team can automatically talk with each other, in addition to hearing appropriate output from the simulator. The White Team member holds a Symetrix ARC-SW4 wall panel that allows him or her to monitor the teams individually or collectively. In addition, the ARC-SW4 gives the White Team member the ability to speak to any or all of the participants.

When asked why they specified Symetrix, Dave Revel, president at Technical Multimedia Design, was unequivocal, “With Symetrix and SymNet, we get a tremendous amount of processing power for the price point. The programming is flexible and easy – we had the entire MCIT system programmed in half a day!.”

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