Future C2 Architecture for Distributed Execution: A Case Study of Intelligent Particles

As the scale of automated and unmanned forces increases, a crucial challenge of controlling, coordinating, and synchronizing the operations of individual force components must be solved. In asymmetric future environments, including urban security operations or disaster relief missions, the traditional hierarchical command and control (C2) organizational structures would not provide enough flexibility needed to adapt the tactical operations. To enable agile functioning of the force, instead of such centrally-controlled operations, researchers recently explored the fully distributed control strategies. However, fully distributed operations are only possible for simple team missions, and are not effective in executing the plans that have complex resource, temporal, and relational dependencies. Our previous research focused on designing hybrid organizational command, control, communication, and information structures, which combine benefits of hierarchical and heterarchical organizational principles to enable agile operations. In this paper, we describe the application of hybrid C2 design to the domain of automated shape assembly, which we performed in the project called Cognitive Particles sponsored by DARPA, Defense Sciences Office. The objective of this research was to develop the processes and control architecture for the automated particle-based shape formation for a large variety of shape structures and under significant uncertainties in the construction process. The roles of commanders are fulfilled by “active particles”, and the roles of force units are fulfilled by “reactive particles”. The particles coordinate to execute the overall plan based on specified shape objectives; these processes are similar to command, control, and coordination requirements of automated and semi-automated forces. Current particle formation frameworks are based on the rigid skeleton assemblies, which can only handle a fixed set of predefined shapes, and cannot adapt the construction to the action uncertainty or changes in the environment. As such, the particle-based shape assembly provided a perfect case study to test the concepts of the agile organizational structures and processes.