8th CGF & BR Conference 11 - 13 May 1999 Copyright 1999 Institute for Simulation & Training Continuous Planning and Collaboration for Command and Control

8th CGF & BR Conference11 - 13 May 1999

Copyright 1999 Institute for Simulation & Training

Continuous Planning and Collaboration

for Command and Control in Joint Synthetic Battlespaces

Jonathan Gratch

Randall W. Hill, Jr.USC Information Sciences Institute



Motivation

• Need cost-effective C2 modeling– Replace / augment human controllers with automated C2 – Represent a wide range of organizations and situations

• Need realistic C2 behavior– C2 models must make believable decisions– The outcomes of C2 operations need to be credible



Project Goals

• Develop autonomous command forces– Act autonomously for days at a time

• Reduce load on human operators

– Behave in human-like manner• Produce realistic training environment

– Perform C3I functions• Reduce the number of human operators• Create realistic organizational interactions



Command Force Requirements

• Continuous Planning– Understand evolving situations– Achieve goals despite unplanned events

• Collaborative Planning– Understand behavior of other groups

• friendly forces and opposing forces

– Understand organizational constraints• communication, coordination, authority



Command Force Requirements

• Intelligence– Identify information requirements– Focus intelligence collection efforts– Model intelligence constraints on planning

• Companion paper:– Deriving Priority Intelligence Requirements for

Synthetic Command Entities



Mission Capabilities

• Army Aviation Deep Attack– Battalion command agent– Company command agents– CSS command agent– AH64 Apache Rotary Wing Aircraft



BP

FARPCSS

HA

HA

FLOT



Soar-CFOR Planning Architecture

• Support for continuous planning– Integrate planning, execution and repair– Continuous situation awareness

• Support for collaborative planning– Reasons about plans of multiple groups– Facilitates plan sharing among entities– Explicit plan management activities



Simulation Architecture

Battalion Commander

Company ACommander

Company XCommander

Company A

PilotHelicopter

PilotHelicopter

PilotHelicopter

ModSAF

Company X

PilotHelicopter

PilotHelicopter

PilotHelicopter

….

….

Operations Order(plan)



Situation Report(understanding)



PerceptsActions PerceptsActions



Architecture

• Planner– Implements continuous planning capabilities

• Situation Assessment– Fuses sensors, reports, and expectations – Generates and updates current world view

• Plan manager– Supports collaborative planning capabilities

• Domain Theory– Declarative knowledge base of domain knowledge



Continuous Planning

• Implements basic planning functions– Generates plans– Controls execution & coordination of subordinates– Recognizes Situation Interrupts and makes repairs

• INPUT: – Domain theory (tasks, plan fragments, assets)– Mission objectives, friendly/enemy plans (from OPORDER)– Existing plans– Current situation (from Situation Awareness)



What are Plans?

• Hierarchically ordered sequences of tasks

• Plans capture assumptions– Column movement assumes enemy contact unlikely

• Plans capture task dependencies– Move_to_Holding_Area results in unit being at the HA,

(precondition to moving to the Battle_Position)– OPFOR and Co must be at the Engage_area simultaneously



Company A plan

Company B plan CSSplan

Move Move Move

Move Move Move Move

Engage EngageReturn ReturnMove

OPFOR Plan

Move Move

Move

Battalion Tactical Plans

CoDeep Attack

CoDeep Attack

FARPOperations



Situation Interrupts Happen!

destroyed(Enemy)

Attack(A, Enemy)

Move(A,BP) Engage(A,Enemy)

at(A,BP)at(A,FARP) at(A,BP) destroyed(Enemy)

destroyed(Enemy)

at(A,FARP)

at(Enemy,EA)

Current World

active(A)

Star

t of

OP

ADA

Attack

active(A)active(A)



Reacting to Situation Interrupt

• Situations evolve unexpectedly– Goals change, actions fail, intelligence incorrect

• Planner detects if change affects plan– Invalidate assumptions?– Violate dependency constraints?

• Repair plans in response to ramifications– Retract tasks invalidated by change– Add new tasks– Re-compute dependencies



Collaborative Planning

• Reason about plans of other entities– Friendly forces, OPFOR

• Reason about interactions between plans• Reason about protocols for resolving

conflicts• Reason about my role in the organization



Interaction Example

Move(A,BP) Engage(A,Y)

Dead(Y)

Move(CSS,HQ)

at(CSS,HQ)at(CSS,FAA)

at(gas,FAA) at(gas,HQ)

at(A,BP)at(A,FAA) at(A,BP)

at(gas,FAA)

Op e

rati

on B

egin

s

Combat Service Support Plan

Attack Helicopter Company Plan

resupplied(HQ)



Planning Stances

• Authoritative – Order subordinate to alter his plans

• Tell CSS to abandon re-supply operation

• Deferential – Change my plans to de-conflict with superior

• Find a way to work around re-supply activity

• Adversarial – Try to introduce conflict in other agent’s plan



Plan Management

• Must model when to use different stances– Involves organizational issues

Where do I fit in the organization

– Stances may need to change over timeDuring COA Analysis, adopt an adversarial stance towards ones own plans

• Must model how stances influence planning– How do we alter COA generation



When to Use a Stance

• Model the collaborative planning process– Includes management tasks that modulate the

generation of tactical plans• Tasks refer to specific tactical plans• Specify preconditions on changing stance

– Includes knowledge of one’s organizational role

• Planner constructs management plans– Use same mechanisms as tactical planning



Example Management Plan

• Explicitly modeling Military Decision Making Process

COADevelopment

Authoritative towards subordinatesDeferential towards superiorsAdversarial towards OPFOR

COAAnalysis

Authoritative towards OPFORAdversarial towards self (war gaming)

Tasks Stances



Implementing Stances

• Implemented as search control on planner– Plan manager:

Takes executing management tasks

Generates search control recommendations

• Example: Deferential Stance– When giving orders to subordinates

Indicate subset of plan is fixed (defer to this)

Indicate rest of plan is flexible– Plan manager enforces these restrictions



Interaction Example

Move(A,BP)

Move(CSS,HQ)

at(CSS,HQ)at(CSS,FAA)

at(gas,FAA) at(gas,HQ)

at(A,BP)at(A,FAA)

at(gas,FAA)

Init

ial S

tate

PlannerRetract

Retract

Deferential towards

Combat Service Support Plan

Make CSS Planner defer to Company A’s Plan

Manager



Architecture

• Encode theory of organizational interaction– Represent stances, authority relationships

• Processed by plan manager

general purposeReasoner(Planner)

Plan Manager Management

Plans

Management Plans

Tactical PlansTactical Plans

ManagementTheory

domain independent

ManagementTheory

domain independent

Tactical Domain Theory

Tactical Domain Theory



Summary

• Realistic, cost-effective C2 modeling– Automate C2 processes– Need flexible, multi-agent planning

• Continuous Planning– Integrates situation awareness, planning, execution, and repair

• Collaborative Planning– Reason about others’ plans, plan interactions– Represent wide range of organizational interactions using

planning stances

Documents

8th CGF & BR Conference 11 - 13 May 1999 Copyright 1999 Institute for Simulation & Training Continuous Planning and Collaboration for Command and Control