Coordination Of Hierarchical Command And Control Services

Abstract

An Advanced Technology Objective (ATO) funded by the US Army is the Tactical Information Technologies for Assured net Operations program.The purpose of this program is to show emerging information technologies can significantly improve key areas of tactical operations, resulting in the conversion of software developed under the ATO to existing battlefield systems. One such key area is Information Dissemination and Management (ID&M). The key software that will be developed under the ID&M portion requires a collection of agent-based software services that will collaborate during tactical mission planning and execution. The agent framework used here is JADE. This work implements prototypes for three TITAN services, the Alert and Warning Service (AWS), the OPORD Support Service (OPS), and the Workflow Orchestration Support (WOS). The work reported here integrates multiagent systems, Web services, distributed event-based systems (in the form of JMS) and Workflows (WADE) for collaboration and dissemination of information. The information used refers to military command and control information represented in XML documents. The integration uses gateways provided as add-ons to the agent framework that is used. Common Knowledge is a prerequisite for coordination among human or artificial agents. Since most of the environments are dynamic, the common knowledge agents what initially have generally is not sufficient for agents to coordinate their actions in each and every situation. Theory of mind is the ability to attribute mental states (beliefs, desires, intentions, assumed roles, etc.) to one and others and to understand that others have mental states different from one\u27s own. Common knowledge and Theory of mind are considered for the coordination of agents in TITAN suites