Team-oriented Agents for Enhancing Fusion Based knowledge for the Objective Force

Sponsor: Army Research Lab

         The goal of this project is to develop team-oriented agent technologies to support Fusion based Knowledge for the Objective Force Science and Technology Objective (STO). The vision of the Knowledge-based Fusion is that information and knowledge will be accessed, fused, and delivered more effectively. To fulfill this vision, data/information sources among and between the Unit of Action command integration cell, as well as other cells corresponding to various battle function areas (such as information superiority cell, maneuver cells) not only need to be integrated using an agent infrastructure that supports their communications and collaborations, but also need an agent teaming model that enables them to anticipate information needs of others and assist them proactively. Team performance researchers have long identified anticipatory behaviors and proactive assist behaviors as key elements of effective teamwork. They have pointed out that high performance team can accomplish this because they establishes overlapping shared mental models. Therefore, a major thrust of the proposed approach is to empower agents in a team with overlapping shared mental model so that they can conduct and support information/knowledge fusion in a proactive way.

         The proposed project will be lead by Dr. John Yen at the Pennsylvania State University. The project will gain leverage from Dr. Yen’s previous and ongoing research in developing intelligent agent technologies. In particular, his current research supported by an AFOSR MURI grant has developed a multi-agent architecture called CAST (Collaborative Agents Simulating Teamwork), which will provide key foundations to the proposed team-oriented agents for knowledge fusion. The proposed project will also utilize expertise and relevant agent technologies developed under the “Agent-based Collaborative Planning” project, supported by Army Research Laboratory through Army Research Office in 2002.

         The main deliverable of the project is an agent teaming architecture that supports fusion based knowledge for the objective force. The proposed agent teaming architecture will be integrated through the CoABS Grid concept and/or EMAA framework developed by Lockheed Martin. The participants of the proposed project will collaborate with relevant researchers from Army Research Laboratory in co-authoring one or more joint papers describing the results of the project.