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CADRC
CAD Research Center
Integrated Marine Multi-Agent Command and Control System Common View of the Battlespace at any access node
An experimental US Marine Corps command and control (C2) decision-support system developed for the Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory (MCWL) jointly by the CAD Research Center (Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo), the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (Cal Tech, Pasadena), the Spawar Systems Center (San Diego), the Navy Research Laboratory (NRL, Stennis Space Center), and SRI International (Menlo Park).
What is IMMACCS? The IMMACCS (Integrated Marine Multi-Agent Command and Control
System) agent-based C2 decision-support system will be tested by the SPMAGTF of the Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory during Urban Warrior in 1999. Urban Warrior is the second Advanced Warfighting Exercise (AWE) of the US Marine Corps Sea Dragon program. The functional objectives of IMMACCS include: a common view of the battlespace; and, near real-time situation awareness at all access nodes. IMMACCS incorporates several kinds of computer-based agents that monitor events in the battlespace to warn the user of unfavorable conditions and arising opportunities, assist the user in analysis and planning tasks, select appropriate weapons for fire missions, and deconflict targets. The principal components of IMMACCS include: an internal Object Model of battlespace entities such as friendly and enemy assets, urban infrastructure elements, environmental phenomena, and operational events; an Agent Engine capable of reasoning about the current common view of the battlespace and several planning views, concurrently; a Shared Net communication system that provides subscriptionbased object-serving facilities; a graphical browser-type user-interface; translators to selected existing C2 software applications; and, additional communication and visualizing facilities that provide a necessary level of redundancy in case of system failure.
IMMACCS
OBJECT BROWSER
IMMACCS
AGENT ENGINE
IMMACCS
OBJECT MODEL
INFRA-STRUCTURE FEATURES (NIMA)
IMMACCS
OBJECT BROWSER
IMMACCS
AGENT ENGINE
AGENT SESSION AGENT AGENT SESSION SESSION AGENT AGENT SESSION IMMACCS MODE AGENT SESSION AGENT SESSION AGENT SESSION AGENT SESSION AGENT
SESSION SESSION
BROWSER BROWSER
BROWSER BROWSER
BACKUP MODE
AGENT SESSION
SHARED NET
TRANSLATOR (IMMACCS)
2-D VIEWER VIEW EXTERNAL SYSTEM EXTERNAL SYSTEM 2-D VIEWER VIEW 2-D VIEWER VIEW 2-D VIEWER VIEW EXTERNAL SYSTEM EXTERNAL SYSTEM EXTERNAL SYSTEM
2-D VIEWER VIEW 2-D VIEWER VIEW 2-D VIEWER VIEW 2-D VIEWER VIEW
EXTERNAL SYSTEM
TRANSLATOR (INCON/TBIS)
INCON/TBIS
INCON/TBIS
What is new about IMMACCS? IMMACCS embodies four major design concepts: object representation; user-computer collaboration; problem solving tools rather than predetermined solutions; and, integration of planning, execution and training capabilities within one system. Fundamental to IMMACCS is the concept of high level internal representation of real world objects. For a computer system to provide meaningful decision-support facilities the system must have some understanding of the information that it is processing. For this reason IMMACCS incorporates an Object Model that describes battlespace entities such as tanks, aircraft, supplies, bridges, buildings, roads, rivers, friendly and enemy units, civilians, and so on, in terms of behavioral characteristics and relationships to each other. For example, in legacy systems the interaction of the user with whatever is currently displayed on a computer screen is limited to a small number of predefined operations because the entire picture (or overlay) displayed on the screen, regardless of complexity, is presented to the user as a single object. In IMMACCS every entity in the picture (e.g., road, tank, building, etc.), as well as intangible
entities such as weather, attack, defense, and so on, are represented as real world objects. Therefore, the user interacts with a computer display that consists of hundreds of real world entities (objects) that all have some understanding of each others nature, interests and objectives, and a great deal of understanding of their own behavior and capabilities. All IMMACCS components share this Object Model and are therefore able to communicate with each other and the users in a common language.
2 Information
4
Asset
Statement
Publication
POL
Munitions
Equipment
Definition
Acronym
Operation Information
Message
Ammunition
Guided Munitions
Unguided Munitions
Position Report Atmospheric Forecast Astronomic Forecast Climatic Forecast Shift Fire SALUTE
Report
Signature
Graphic
Lethal Ammunition
Non-Lethal Ammunition
Cartridge
Patrol BDA CFF Request
Communication
Medevac Resupply
Navigation
Weapon
Sensor
Baton Round
Pyrotechnics
Guidance System
Sight System
Annex
Appendix
Enclosure
Operation Document
Section
Tab
Lethal Weapon
Non-Lethal Weapon
Crew-Served Weapon
Personal Weapon
Jammer
Countermeasure
Operation Plan
Operation Order
Decoy Chaff
Since IMMACCS has some understanding of the content of the data streams that flow through its components, it can incorporate software modules (i.e., agents) with reasoning and similarly intelligent capabilities. These agents perform many kinds of functions such as monitoring events that occur in the battlespace, evaluating current conditions, identifying conflicts, proposing and evaluating alternative courses of action, and pursuing the interests of specific entities such as groups or individual persons and any other data objects included in the IMMACCS Object Model (IOM). The primary purpose of IMMACCS is to assist its human users by collaborating with them, rather than automating the decision making process. In this respect IMMACCS provides a partnership between complementary human and computer capabilities. While the computer excels in high speed parallel computing and data management tasks, the human user brings powerful conceptualization, abstraction, learning and intuition capabilities into the partnership. IMMACCS recognizes that naturally occurring problem situations cannot be predefined accurately. Experience has shown that predetermined problem solutions in legacy computer systems seldom apply in their totality to real world situations. Therefore, IMMACCS has been designed as a set of collaborative tools that can be applied dynamically both by users and the system itself to the current problem situation. These tools are equally applicable to planning, execution and training scenarios, and can be applied in each of these areas simultaneously. Thus users are able to continuously adapt to changing conditions in the battlespace by instituting dynamic re-planning and re-training operations.
Paradigm 2 -System Integration: Unlike past confederations of linked legacy systems with predefined data
flow paths, IMMACCS is an integrated system of components with object-based knowledge-passing facilities. Each component shares the common language represented by the IOM library and utilizes the subscription services that the Shared Net object-serving communication system makes available to its clients.
INTEGRATED IMMACCS COMPONENTS
COMPONENT (A) (with IOM library) COMPONENT (B) (with IOM library)
SYSTEM (C) (unique text objects) COMPONENT (C) (with IOM library) COMPONENT (D) (with IOM library) COMPONENT (E) (with IOM library) SYSTEM (D) (real-world objects without relationships) SYSTEM (E) (meaningless text streams)
IMMACCS COMMUNICATION
IMMACCS COMPONENT WITH IOM LIBRARY
ALERTS
PROXY (cache)
QUERIES
DATA TRANSLATION
DATA TRANSLATION
DATA TRANSLATION
Paradigm 4 -System Architecture: IMMACCS overcomes the inflexibility and fragility of stove-piped legacy systems that rely on hardwired and predefined data channels, by employing an open architecture. In this open architecture object-based application components may be freely added or deleted without jeopardizing the integrity of the entire system.
IMMACCS ARCHITECTURE
OBJECT-BASED (IOM) APPLICATION COMPONENT OBJECT-BASED (IOM) APPLICATION COMPONENT
Paradigm 5 - Information Integration: In IMMACCS, the fragmented views of the battlespace that have in
the past been spread over several legacy application systems, are combined into one common view of the battlespace that may be viewed by any authorized user on one computer screen at any access point.
IMMACCS
ECOC
LEGACY SYSTEMS
COC
PDA
WORKSTATION
PDA
LAPTOP
WORKSTATION
Paradigm 6 - Information Understanding: Whereas in existing legacy systems views of the battlespace are
represented as bitmaps that must be filtered and interpreted by the user, in IMMACCS all views are represented as interactive real world objects with internal meaning to the system. Therefore, the IMMACCS environment can support computer-based agents capable of reasoning about events in the battlespace and providing analysis and interpretation assistance to the human decision makers.
IMMACCS
SERVICE AGENT SERVICE AGENT
LEGACY SYSTEMS
SERVICE AGENT
MENTOR AGENT
SERVICE AGENT SERVICE AGENT
MENTOR AGENT
Paradigm 7 - Real World Responsiveness: Within the IMMACCS decision making environment users and expert agents collaborate with computer-based decision-support tools to address unconstrained, naturally occurring, real world problem situations. This represents a major advance over legacy systems that typically provide predetermined solution sequences to a limited set of preconceived problems that may occur in a different form in the real world. In IMMACCS the emphasis is placed on providing the user with tools to interact directly with the computer to solve problems.
IMMACCS
AGENT PROBLEM SITUATION USER AGENT AGENT
LEGACY SYSTEMS
USER SOLUTION A SOLUTION E SOLUTION B SOLUTION C USER USER AGENT AGENT AGENT AGENT AGENT AGENT PROBLEM SITUATION USER USERS AND EXPERT AGENTS COLLABORATE SPONTANEOUSLY TO SOLVE CHANGING PROBLEMS USER SOLUTION B USER SOLUTION C USER SOLUTION A USER USER
AGENT
PROBLEM SITUATION
USER
USER
SOLUTION E
SOLUTION D
USER
IMMACCS Agents: The IMMACCS Agent Engine automatically initiates an Agent Session whenever any user creates a new View. These Agent Sessions execute in parallel and may comprise any combination of the following kinds of agents: Monitor Agents that monitor events in the battlespace; Service Agents that have deep knowledge in narrow domains and provide expert services to other agents and users; Planning Agents that specialize in planning tasks; Mentor Agents that represent the interests of particular objects in the battlespace; and, Coordination Agents that identify collaborative conflicts. Object Command Language: IMMACCS incorporates an Object Command Language (OCL)
that allows users to store OPLAN and OPORD information in IMMACCS. This information serves as context for Agent Sessions in their respective View centered analysis, planning, servicing and coordination tasks. During mission analysis and planning stages the OCL provides powerful search and reporting capabilities in support of the Intelligence Preparation of the Battlefield (IPB) process.
CAD Research Center, California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, CA 93407 Telephone: (805) 756-2841/1310 FAX: (805)756-7567 E-mail: jpohl@calpoly.edu http://www.cadrc.calpoly.edu