Human-Computer Visualization

In response to the Army's need for improved visualization and situation identification capabilities, Soar Technology, Inc., working with Situation Awareness Technologies and North Carolina State University, propose to combine state of the art techniques in situation awareness, agent-based cognitive systems, and information visualization to create a system that will demonstrate how information age transformation can enable fundamental improvements to a battlefield commanders tactical decision-making. In addition, the system will support the Army's ability to train human commanders visualization and conceptualization skills. We will do this by developing three core architectural components; computational models for representing situation awareness, a visualization framework for presenting information in perceptually salient forms, and an agent system based on the Soar cognitive architecture for reasoning across real-world environments, identifying battlefield situations, and matching user and system representations of events. These components will be developed within the framework of an intelligent user interface that supports information delivery in a way that is contextually-sensitive to the warfighter's needs. This solution will not only have wide military application, at multiple levels of Command and Control and battlefield systems, but also in application areas as diverse as industrial and manufacturing control, law enforcement, emergency response management, and air traffic control.