VERTIgO - Virtual Enhanced Reality for Interoperable Training of CBRN Military and Civilian Operators

VERTIgO is a European Union funded project within the European Defence Industrial Development Programme (EDIDP), running from December 2021 to May 2024. The project is led and coordinated by Fondazione SAFE, in a consortium composed of the Italian Joint NBC Defence School, the Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development (ENEA), the University of Tor Vergata, the International Affairs Institute (IAI), Fondazione LINKS, the Austrian Institute of Technology (AIT), Italian Gas Mask producer Mestel Safety, and Belgian VR company Altheria. The VERTIgO project supports an integrated approach to conflicts and disaster relief by designing a new, harmonized tool supporting virtualization and simulation of CBRN defence training. The overall objective of the project is the study, design and validation of a European Exercise Simulation Platform (EESP) for the application of VR to CBRN training. In addition to supporting the delivery of CBRN VR training simulations, including with four pre-defined test-case scenarios set in different environments, the EESP is designed to enable CBRN trainers with no software development experience to independently create and edit CBRN scenarios, thanks to a dedicated Scenario Builder component (i.e. the “Editor”). Complementing the design of this innovative software component, the VERTIgO project aims to elevate the training experience with the development of a prototype of an ad-hoc hardware solution, which integrates a VR headset and CBRN mask for enhanced realism and user experience.