The Behavioural Skills Training System (BSTS) project explores how conversational AI and virtual reality (VR) can enhance behavioural, communication, and interpersonal skills training across healthcare, emergency services, and policing. Building on our experience collaborating with paramedic and nursing students, emergency services personnel, and police officers, the project provides frequent, low-risk opportunities to practise complex interactions in realistic, high-pressure scenarios. These include de-escalation, patient and community interaction, conflict management, empathy, decision-making, and communication under pressure.

BSTS uses ConvAI as the conversational AI platform to create intelligent virtual characters that can engage naturally with learners and respond dynamically to their actions and communication. Within an immersive VR environment, virtual patients, community members, or other scenario-specific characters can respond through voice, emotion, gesture, and movement. Flexible personas can vary in tone, emotional state, behaviour, and level of cooperation or resistance, allowing scenarios to adapt to different learning objectives and professional contexts.

The platform can support scenarios ranging from patient assessment and difficult clinical conversations to emergency response, de-escalation, conflict resolution, and police-community interactions. Learners can repeat scenarios, experiment with different communication approaches, and experience how their decisions influence an interaction without the risks associated with real-world encounters.

By integrating ConvAI with immersive VR, BSTS aims to make simulation training more realistic, accessible, repeatable, and scalable, while reducing reliance on trained actors, specialist facilities, and resource-intensive simulations. The broader goal is to establish BSTS as a flexible training platform that can be adapted across disciplines, including healthcare, emergency services, policing, and other professions where effective communication and behavioural skills are critical.