HyDRA: Highly Distributed Real-time Agents

SIFT, LLC, proposes to develop HyDRA, a network-centric, mixed-initiative, distributed planning system that will provide real-time response to complex situations evolving at different time scales and in different locations. SIFT will draw on experience with three key technologies: partial centralization, the Cooperative Intelligent Real-time Control Architecture (CIRCA), and Playbook(TM)-based mixed initiative systems. Each of these techniques involves specialized plan representations, and a key component of HyDRA development will be to fuse the different representations into a comprehensive plan representation meeting the needs of complex, distributed, mixed-initiative planning under time pressure. BENEFIT: HyDRA will dramatically improve the state of the art in distributed, mixed-initiative planning systems, in particular allowing improved speed of reaction, better human supervision, and improved information flow.