An Intelligent Tool for Dynamic Situation Assessment and Prediction

The development of autonomous intelligently interactive software agents is crucial to the success of autonomous control for unmanned vehicle systems. Autonomous systems are scheduled for use over one-third of all future military combat, hence developingsoftware to control these vehicles in a cooperative, intelligent manner is of paramount importance. The objective of this research project is to continue development and fully test evolutionary agent-based software systems (ABS) that can be directlyimplemented for control of fielded unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) systems. In Phase I, use and broad applicability of these evolutionary agent-based systems was investigated. These evolutionary agents are capable of efficiently generating behaviors for avariety of autonomous systems. Phase II will pursue full implementation and advanced development of evolutionary agents with specific application within a UAV testbed. This same technology has broad commercial applicability, with uses in hazardous wastecontrol, fire-fighting, as well as in a variety of surveillance scenarios. Software developed should be transferable into existing, prototype and testbed autonomous UAV controllers.