Intelligent Agent Battlespace Augmentation

Abstract

The anticipated dynamics of the future battlefield will require greatly increased mobility, information flow, information assimilation, and responsiveness from a tactical operation center (TOC) and platforms (tanks, armored personnel carriers, etc.). Three significant and related trends in the evolution of the tactical battlefield address these requirements. The first is the increased automation of the brigade nerve center or TOC. Much of this automation will be provided by software agent technology. The second is the digitization of current battlefield platforms. This digitization greatly reduces the uncertainty concerning these platforms and enables automated information exchange between these platforms and their TOC. The third is the rapid development of robotics or physical agents for numerous battlefield tasks such as clearing buildings of hazards (such as snipers) or performing wingman functions for a future combat vehicle. This paper illustrates the potential synergy between these seemingly disparate developments, particularly related to battlefield visualization, multi-resolution analysis, software agents, and physical agents. Battlefield visualization programs are currently focussed on representing the physical environment. This greatly contributes to situation awareness at the TOC and platform levels. As intelligent agents, both software and physical agents, are developed, battlefield visualization must be enhanced to include the state, behavior, and results of the actions of these agents. Multiresolution data and analysis will enhance visualization, software agent and physical agent performance.