Agent-based Knowledge-design Assistance (AKA)

The Agent-based Knowledge-design Assistant (AKA), a generic knowledge-building tool, enables Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) to easily create, modify, and manage knowledge, without specialized training. The Missile Defense Agency needs tools thateffectively build and share knowledge to make their complex systems more reliable, flexible, and easy to use.Through an integrated environment, SMEs can rapidly capture their knowledge, and serve it through a web-based infrastructure. Sentar's innovation combines intelligent agents with generalized design patterns, called Knowledge Templates (KTs), to automatethe knowledge building process. Using XML, AKA provides an extensible solution to complex systems to distribute and share the knowledge with other networked users, and easily accommodate future modifications. In Phase I, Sentar demonstrated thefeasibility of the AKA concept by designing the environment and prototyping two KTs. In Phase II, Sentar will adapt the AKA technology to use XML for knowledge interchange and will implement additional knowledge templates. This will enable AKA to produceknowledge modules targeted for use in an actual multi-agent knowledge system. Sentar will then demonstrate the added value of the system in the Battle Management Command and Control domain proving that complicated systems of the future can utilizeknowledge while reducing complexity and increasing flexibility.