Translation of Mission Directives to Behaviors Including Thresholds in Autonomous Undersea Search Sensor Elements of Distributed Sensing Systems

Autonomous unmanned distributed sensing systems are in the process of revolutionizing undersea military search. The importance of search to military operations is greatest in the environment where detection is the most difficult, i.e. undersea operations. Now distributed sensing systems promise an order of magnitude reduction in search times for enemy undersea targets. In order to realize the potential of distributed sensing systems, this project will design a decentralized methodology function which will control thresholds and other settable parameters of distributed sensing systems to carry out the intent of the warfighters’ mission control directives in an environment where communication is severely limited. Our methodology will apply to a wide range of distributed sensing systems. It will allow these systems to utilize available intelligence on undersea targets, utilize environmental data, react to emerging events, and deal with failures of individual system components in a distributed manner.