Augmenting DIS Player Units WIth COGNET Technology

Distributed Interactive Simulation (DIS) is rapidly becoming a core technology for interactive training, system development and evaluation, and strategy/tactics evaluation. Future DIS applications need the ability to flexibly combine crewed simulators, instrumented live-fire system, and automated surrogate players. Current technology, however, is inadequate for generating surrogate playrs with the needed flexibility and realism. There is, therefore, a need for new technology with which to develop and simulate surrogate DIS players. The proposed research assesses the feasiblity of meeting this need through application of COGNET, a methdology and software technology intitially developed to construct autonomous agents in human-computer interfaces. COGNET is unique in its ability to model the real-time, multi-tasking aspects of human performance in tactical situations, and its ability to link state-of-the-art artificial intelligence technology for planning and problem solving with highly detailed modeling of vehavior. The Phase I research develops and analyzes a COGNET-based architecture for generating DIS surrogate players, and offers an option to develop a software design for a tool that implements this architecture in a Phase II effort.