Intelligent Decision Agent (IDA) for Automated Mission Planning

Advanced Mission Management (AMM) requires Automated Mission Planning (AMP) capability that, in turn, dictates the need to have tools for intelligent fusion of multi-source data for situational awareness, human-like reasoning for optimal mission plans (course-of-action (COA)) determination, and optimal plan adjustment when situation changes are detected and threats are recognized. We propose to develop a versatile software toolset for AMP based on new classes of Intelligent Agents that can learn, adapt, reason and make appropriate decisions from the input data and the assigned task, under the current situation-context and resource constraints. Basically, the agent architecture follows the human Observe-Orient-Decide-Act (OODA) intelligence decision loop that can be mapped into the well-known Beliefs-Desires-Intentions (BDI) agent architecture. Furthermore, the reasoning capability of our intelligent agents will exploit the peculiar characteristics of causal graphs (e.g., Fuzzy Cognitive Map - FCM), Case-Based Reasoning (CBR), and Behavior-Based Control System (BBCS) concept to efficiently assist decision-makers (DM) in AMP tasks. Changes in the operational environment and resources availability will be monitored through real-time situational awareness and Mission Plan adjustment, if required, will be automatically generated. The optimal mission task assignment will be performed by auction-based algorithms.