Urban Operations are an increasingly important part of military operations, both nationally and during expeditions. The complexity of the urban environment makes these operations difficult, and a key aspect of this complexity is the presence of local population. The individual soldier needs to constantly analyze unclear situations, predict civilians' intentions and be able to rapidly make decisions in order to both ensure their own safety and prevent lethal mistakes, which would endanger the goodwill of the population. Gaining experience with civilians through training is essential for successful execution of urban operations.

In the Urban Training programs of the Royal Netherlands Army live training facilities are available, but a varied group of well-trained role players is scarcely available and costly to use. This paper presents the result of a three year research project into an innovative enhancement to live training for Urban Short Range Interaction (USRI). In this concept, trainees enter a live, physical environment (a room) enriched with virtual role players (projected on the wall) that respond directly to the user's actions.

A technical demonstrator was developed that integrates commercial-off-the-shelf elements, such as a gesture and a speech recognition system. We report on the user value analysis that was carried out with various parties in the Defense and Safety domain, presenting the phases in the training programs where the application of USRI has the most training value. Finally, we describe the system requirements that have been evaluated with the intended users.