ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (AI) - ROBOTICS: AI-BASED FIRE CONTROL DECISION AIDS

A BASIC RESEARCH PROGRAM HAS BEEN INITIATED AT THE ARMANENT RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT CENTER (ARDC) ENCOMPASSING THE FIELDS OF AI AND ROBOTICS FOR APPLICATIONS TO WEAPON PLATFORM AUTOMATION AND FIRE CONTROLSYSTEMS. THE THRUST OF THE PROGRAM IS TO DEVELOP "SYSTEM-BUILD" TOOLSOR SOFTWARE MODULES TO SUPPORT EVOLUTIONARY DEVELOPMENT AND PROTOTYPE DEMONSTRATION OF AN AUTONOMOUS/SEMI-AUTONOMOUS PLATFORM CAPABILITY. AKM ASSOCIATES PROPOSES TO DEVELOP A DEFENSIVE/OFFENSIVE FIRE CONTROL DECISION AID A (FCDA) MODULE WHICH WOULD BE A COMPANION TO THE AUTOMATIC TARGET RECOGNITION (ATR) MODULE WE ARE CURRENTLY DEVELOPING UNDER CONTRACT TO ARDC. THESE TWO AI-BASED FIRE CONTROL DECISON AIDS WOULD BE OF GREAT SIGNIFICANCE WITHIN THE ADOPTED FINITE-STATE-MACHINE(FSM) STRUCTURE FOR THE WEAPON PLATFORM AUTOMATION: 1) AUTOMATIC TARGET RECOGNITION (ATR) IS BASED ON MULTISENSOR INTEGRATION (MSI) AND'EXTRA-SIGNAL' INTELLIGENCE CORRELATION USING TOOLS OF PERCEPTUAL REA-SONING. 2) DEFENSIVE/OFFENSIVE FIRE CONTROL DECISION AID (FCDA) WOULD ACT AS A TARGETING AID TO THE COMMANDER/GUNNER. THE TWO MODULES(ATR AND FCDA) WILL BE DEVELOPED TO OPERATE AS STAND-ALONE MODULES OR BE EASILY INTEGRABLE WITHIN THE HIERARCHICAL CONTROL FRAMEWORK OF WEAPON PLATFORM AUTOMATION. FCDA MODULE WILL BE DEVELOPED ON MICROVAX II WITH MICROVMS 3 OPERATING SYSTEM AND USING THE VAXLISP LANGUAGE. SUCH AN IMPLEMENTATION WILL BE COMPLETELY PORTABLE TO ARDC VAX 11/780 COMPUTER SYSTEM.