Adaptive User-Guided Multimodal ENhanced Troubleshooter (AUGMENT)

The effectiveness of weapons platforms employed by the Marine Corps is dependent on a maintenance technician’s ability to rapidly diagnose and solve problems associated with them. Given that the distribution of novice versus expert maintainers to resolve such problems is unequal, it would be ideal if intelligent agents could be used to provide junior maintainers with troubleshooting assistance for the purposes of enhancing overall development. Given the lack of software tools that specifically address this need, we propose to design and develop the Adaptive User-Guided Multimodal ENhanced Troubleshooter (AUGMENT) to significantly improve the troubleshooting capabilities of junior maintainers through the use of adaptive intelligent agents. Three core components characterize our approach. First, we will perform a work domain analysis on a specific scenario to identify the information requirements associated with problem diagnosis and problem solving amongst maintenance technicians. Second, we will design and demonstrate a tool which uses intelligent agent and multimodal display technology to provide troubleshooting and training assistance to the operator under a variety of conditions. Third, we will conduct initial evaluations to assess the effectiveness of AUGMENT for significantly improving the trouble shooting capability of junior maintainers.