Collaborative Assistance and Rapid Team Optimization System (CARTOS)

Aptima Inc. and the MIT Media lab are pleased to submit this proposal for a Phase II continuation of its STTR Phase I project to develop a Spontaneous Collaboration Assistant and Linking Engine (SCALE). The present proposal is a joint effort of Aptima, Inc. and Perceptronics Solutions, Inc., who have combined forces to develop together a new Collaborative Assistance and Rapid Team Optimization System (CARTOS) as a synergistic extension and enhancement of their individual STTR Phase I efforts. The proposal describes the CARTOS system concept and how the companies will work together under separate contracts to develop, evaluate, transition, commercialize and market the CARTOS technology and products. CARTOS is an innovative system that will automatically form and adaptively improve ‘virtual teams’ using data from organizational communications and other sources. The virtual teams will be formed to identify new collaboration opportunities within the organization, to attack immediate mission-related tasks and address long-duration objectives, and to discover ‘hidden’ capabilities relating to problem areas well suited for future work by the organization. the technical approach combines several fundamental innovations, including: (1) the first integration of Social Networking and Topic Modeling; and (2) the first application of Multiagent Systems to team formation and optimization.