Talib S. Hussain

Adaptive Dynamic Radio Open-source Intelligent Team (ADROIT): Cognitively-controlled Collaboration among SDR Nodes

The ADROIT project is building an open-source software-defined data radio, intended to be controlled by cognitive applications. The goal is to create a system that enables teams of radios, where each radio both has its own cognitive controls and the ability to collaborate with other radios, to create cognitive radio teams. The desire to create cognitive radio teams, and the goal of having an open-source system, requires a rich and carefully architected system that provides great flexibility (enabling cognitive applications to change the radios behavior) and also has a clear structure (both so that others may add or enhance the software, and also so that the system can be clearly modeled for cognitive applications). What follows is a summary of the ADROIT system and the key architectural features intended to enable cognitive radio teams.

Evolution-Based Deliberative Planning for Cooperating Unmanned Ground Vehicles in a Dynamic Environment

Many challenges remain in the development of tactical planning systems that will enable automated, cooperative replanning of routes and mission assignments for multiple unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) under changing environmental and tactical conditions. We have developed such a planning system that uses an evolutionary algorithm to assign waypoints and mission goals to multiple UGVs so that they jointly achieve a set of mission goals. Our evolutionary system applies domain-specific genetic operators, termed tactical advocates because they capture specific tactical behaviors, to make targeted improvements to plans. The plans are evaluated using a set of tactical critics that together comprise a multiobjective fitness function. Each critic evaluates a plan against criteria such as avoiding an enemy or meeting mission goals. Experimental results show that this approach produces highquality plans with the potential for real-time dynamic replanning.

Flexible and Purposeful NPC Behaviors using Real-Time Genetic Control

There is an increasing need in modern computer games for non-player characters (NPCs) with robust behaviors that achieve game objectives while appearing flexible and believable to the human players interacting with those NPCs. Evolutionary approaches to game artificial intelligence (game AI) have produced successful results for complex game winning strategies, realistic behavior patterns for groups of simulated entities, and more. However, there has been relatively little effort on evolutionary techniques for producing rich NPC behaviors for interaction with human players. To explore whether evolutionary mechanisms can support real-time control of NPCs to produce flexible and purposeful behavior, we present our initial efforts at integrating a genetic algorithm based robotic controller with an off-the-shelf game to control one or more NPCs dynamically. We describe the integration effort and our initial observations, and discuss our plan for achieving richer NPC control and for performing more detailed analysis of the behaviors of the resulting NPCs.

THE USE OF MASSIVE MULTI-PLAYER GAMING TECHNOLOGY FOR MILITARY TRAINING: A PRELIMINARY EVALUATION

Publicly available Massive Multi-Player Games (MMPG) allow multiple individuals to work together in simulated situations. To meet complex game objectives, users must exhibit high degrees of coordination. This is similar to the types of interactions required for effective coordination in military team environments, and this resemblance has not gone unnoticed. DARWARS is an initiative that aims to support a diverse array of distributed simulation-based military instruction, including those that allow large numbers of participants to interact in on-line virtual worlds. In effect, MMPGs are being considered as platforms for future training. In this paper, we describe a framework and evaluate a preliminary methodology for training teamwork skills (e.g., information exchange, teammate monitoring) in an MMPG environment. Data collected from a field exercise of 40 infantry soldiers suggests that MMPGs are capable of training teamwork skills in distributed environments. Based on the results of this exercise, we provide practice-oriented guidelines for using MMPGs as a training tool, and offer some suggestions for future research into effective performance measurement paradigms in this environment.

Design and Development of Training Games: Practical Guidelines from a Multidisciplinary Perspective

a summary of the key elements of design and development that require particular atten• tion from multiple disciplines to ensure success; an overview of successful models and methods, and of the trade-offs made throughout • the process, to help guide development; cohesive, multidisciplinary views of the issues that may arise and of the techniques • applied to produce effective learning games grounded in specifi c experiences, community consensus, and analysis of successful learning games that have already been released; and the stories behind the games, to illustrate how fi nal design and development decisions • were reached.

Opening Cinematics: Their Cost-Effectiveness in Serious Games

For the development of serious gaming, it is necessary to articulate the specific features that lend themselves best to the creation of effective learning games. Given the limited resources of the typical serious games developer, time and money should be spent in a way such that features with the greatest return on investment take priority. Opening cinematics, a popular feature of games, was examined through the lens of three major theoretical perspectives that promote learning, specifically situated learning, emotional arousal, and goal orientation. A series of three experiments was conducted to determine if the inclusion of opening cinematics was able to change the goal orientation of players as well as improve the effectiveness of a serious game used to train U.S. Navy recruits shipboard damage control procedures. The data suggest that opening cinematics were not worth the immense development investment. Game design suggestions and potential topics for future research are provided.

Cognitive Adaptation for Teams in ADROIT

We have created a sensor-sharing protocol that uses cognition to increase performance by choosing protocol parameters based on the current environment and the past relationships between environment and performance. We have constructed a prototype of the protocol, and experimented with it in a four-node outdoor testbed. Our testbed is part of a larger effort, ADROIT, which seeks to create cognitive teams of software-defined radios [l].

A reconfigurable multiagent society for transportation scheduling and dynamic rescheduling

We have investigated the use of an agent-based system to automate the process of scheduling all the transportation assets for the U.S. military. For this problem, the creation of a fixed schedule based on static requirements is insufficient. Instead, we need to be able to maintain the schedule as a dynamic entity in the face of changing requirements, unreliable assets, and unexpected events during execution. Towards this end, we have focused on two main areas: dynamic rescheduling and dynamic load management. Dynamic rescheduling involves updating an existing schedule in response to changes in the scheduling resources and requirements, and is a special challenge in a multiagent environment. We discuss the approach we used to propagate and coordinate changes between the different agents. Dynamic load management includes the ability of the multiagent society to change its structure in response to changing computational requirements. We examine a set of techniques, including dynamic agent creation, to continually update the allocation of computational resources to the scheduling process.

Considering User Knowledge in the Evaluation of Training System Usability

A variety of software-based systems are being used as training media. There is not, however, an accepted approach to evaluating the usability of these systems. Traditional usability approaches can be employed with some effectiveness, but they may lack appropriate specificity for use in training. In this paper, we evaluate whether assessing, and remediating, gaps in learner knowledge might be an important addition to training system evaluation. The results suggest that remediating knowledge gaps might lead to more accurate usability conclusions.

Enabling open-source cognitively-controlled collaboration among software-defined radio nodes

Software-defined radios (SDRs) are now recognized as a key building block for future wireless communications. We have spent the past year enhancing existing open software to create a software-defined data radio. This radio extends the notion of software-defined behavior to higher layers in the protocol stack: most importantly through the media access layer. Our particular approach to the problem has been guided by the desire to allow fine-grained cognitive control of the radio. We describe our system, Adaptive Dynamic Radio Open-source Intelligent Team (ADROIT).