An Intelligent Interface-Agent Framework for Supervisory Command and Control

The Army’s vision of the future for armored and mechanized military structure includes the use of mixed teams of human and robotic forces on a dynamic and rapidly changing battlefield. Successful implementation of this vision will require autonomous and semi-autonomous robotic forces and a command and control infrastructure that will allow human, robotic, and mixed teams to be controlled quickly and easily. For maximum effectiveness this infrastructure should allow human commanders to control the robot teams in a similar manner to how they command human teams, that is, in the language of the military, not the language of robotic control theory. Furthermore, the human interface for robotic command and control must simplify warfighter tasks and automate processes such that cognitive workload is reduced, situation awareness is enhanced, and situational control is preserved. In this paper we present initial results from ongoing efforts in developing an intelligent user interface for controlling mixed elements of manned and robotic forces. We have developed a C3 framework of cooperative interface agents that reflect roles found in military command staffs to create a virtual staff for the commander of robotic forces by embedding these military functions within the C3 interface.