The main objective of the project is:
To accelerate the application of AI techniques, including advanced software engineering and HCI (Human-Computer Interface) techniques, in command, control, communications and intelligence (C3I) systems.
The secondary objectives are:
to develop intelligent tools for:
automated report analysis
time-critical decision support, planning and tasking (DSPT) in the army and naval domains
to form domain simulations drawn from land tactical and naval systems to aid the development and testing of the architecture and its methods
to define and implement a workstation architecture able to accommodate existing and emerging methods and tools, and to forge new standards;
to encourage European collaboration in C3I research and development.
The end result of the work, completed in Autumn 1998, is a demonstrator system incorporating two or more C3I workstations which incorporate AI technologies functioning as a complete system, able to perform designated tasks in the army and naval domains. This system is being supported at Logica’s premises until June 2000.
It is emphasised that the purpose of this research project is to demonstrate how AI, HCI and software engineering techniques can be applied to C3I functions, not to develop new AI techniques for their own sake, nor to develop a complete and integrated operational C3I workstation. However it has been necessary to implement sufficient non-intelligent functionality to effectively demonstrate and integrate the intelligent tools.
In order to ensure that the work had a strong military focus, workshops were held between the GRACE researchers and military experts to agree the users and tasks to be supported, the scenarios in which the facilities would be developed and the military benefits to be demonstrated. These are detailed in Chapter 6. The term ‘facility’ was used specifically to mean a software tool that:
used AI
supported the user in specific tasks, to give a clear military benefit to him, in the agreed scenario
had a user interface, and could thus be demonstrated.
Each participating company took responsibility for one or more facilities, giving a clear partitioning of the work. However a further objective of the project is to integrate the facilities together, at three main levels, as shown below:
System integration requirements
Facilities (indicated as yellow boxes), which incorporate a wide range of different AI techniques, have to communicate with each other to request and provide services or information.
Facilities should be able to run on any of a set of networked computers (shown as green boxes), which may be of different types running different operating systems.
Multiple users need to be able to use an appropriate subset of facilities, of their own workstation, and to group-work with other users.
The integrated software was developed on 17 different sites, calling for a high degree of European collaboration and co-ordination.
The project represents a major investment by the participating MoDs and GRACE companies. There is thus an implicit requirement that exploitation and re-use of the results and software from the project be achieved, initially in support of further research and ultimately in operational systems.
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| Produced by: Peter Martin / Russell Gordon /
Mike Pockney Updated: 29 March 1999 Copyright Logica 1999 |
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