Coalition Agents eXperiment - The Coalition TIE

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CoAX Stand-alone Contributions Dartmouth
College, UMichigan, MIT Sloan, OBJS Coalition
Agents eXperiment (CoAX) http//www.aiai.ed.ac.uk/
project/coax/
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Stand-alone Contributions

• Dartmouth Field Observation Agent
• MIT Robustness Service
• Michigan Coordination Planning Aid
• OBJS eGents Communicating via E-mail

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Field Observations (Dartmouth)

• ActComm Project
• Dartmouth, Harvard, RPI, Illinois, ALPHATECH,
  Lockheed Martin
• Department of Defense Multidisciplinary
  University Research Initiative
• Developing a system to provide network access to
  soldiers in the field
• CoAX Goal
• Demonstrate the ease with which the large ActComm
  legacy system can be integrated with the rest
  of CoAX via the DARPA CoABS Grid

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Field Observations (Dartmouth)

• Team of soldiers
• PDAs
• Ad-hoc wireless networking
• Soldiers make observations.
• Ground and air traffic
• Personnel and equipment
• Buildings and other structures
• Observations fed into battle-planning systems
  (e.g., MBP) through the CoABS Grid.
• In the demo, a team of CoAX soldiers will make
  observations to correct Gao misinformation.

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Field Observations (Dartmouth)
I see a tank!
Query/ Response
Observation Viewer
(9-month demo - standalone)
Registration/ Update Stream
Observations
MBP
(18-month demo - integrated)
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Field Observations (Dartmouth)
29-SEP-2012 1347.56 OBSERVATION 0018 VEHICLE
Observer 16.35 N, 35.28 E, Elevation 530 m
Sightline 270 deg, 0 deg down, 2000 m Vehicle
Gao, flatbed truck, 3 axles, heading 180,
speed 60 km/h Note 12 soldiers in
flatbed
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The Challenge Robust Agent Coalitions

• Coalitions are open systems
• Dynamic membership, often novel partners
• Agents in open systems will be unreliable
• Intermittent bugs (3 per 1000 lines in the best
  crafted code) as well as the possibility of
  malice
• Infrastructures can be unreliable
• Current failure tolerance approaches are
  insufficient
• Assume closed systems (e.g. mirroring)
• Full rollbacks are unnecessarily inefficient for
  agents

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The MIT Robustness Service

• Monitors agent health via polling
• Responds to agent failure via intelligent task
  cancellation task re-announcement
• Maintains reliability information (for failure
  avoidance)
• Designed for open systems - makes minimal
  assumptions about agents

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A Working Grid Service

• Transparently infers commitment structures
• Assumes (some) agents support (some of ) EH API
• Polling (backup existing Grid is-alive? method)
• Task re-announce
• Cancel-task

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Benefits Validated Empirically

• Up to 3x speedup and 8x reduced variability vs.
  standard timeout-retry approach
• Benefits increase with task complexity
  (decomposition tree height) and with level of EH
  API support
• http//ccs.mit.edu/klein/papers/ASES-WP-2000-05.ps

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Michigan Multilevel Coordinator Agent

• Analyses the alternative plan spaces of coalition
  functional teams that plan independently and act
  asynchronously
• Works top-down with plans chosen by teams to
  predict unintended interactions (resource
  contentions friendly fire).
• Identifies candidate resolutions (timing or
  action constraints).
• Notifies process panel of possible plan
  conflicts and computed workarounds.
• Operationalizes/enforces coordination decisions
  selected.
• Given more time, isolates and resolves conflicts
  more precisely and efficiently.
• Allows planning and coordination decisions to be
  postponed until runtime conditions become better
  known.
• Packaged as a Grid-aware component that will be
  proactively executing and will be utilized by the
  AIAI Process Panel.

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Michigan Coalition Coordination Example
Forces begin at aircraft carrier AC Airforce
sorties to C, E, Q for Total Exclusion
Zone (TEZ) Logistics delivers humanitarian
aid to refugees at F and R ArmyDiv1 occupies X to
prevent Agadez forces from reaching
and inciting refugees at R ArmyDiv2 crosses TEZ
to occupy Y to monitor for Gao crossings
Potential plan conflicts include friendly fire in
TEZ on ArmyDiv2, destruction of roads through E
that ArmyDiv2 might need, and contention for sea
and rail transport among army divisions and
logistics.
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Coordinated Plans

• Hierarchical plan coordination incrementally
  recommends coordinated plans that are
  increasingly detailed and parallelized

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Michigan Multilevel Coordinator Agent
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OBJS eGents Agents over Email
Problem
CoAX Impact

• Dynamic military situations are often
  disconnected and asynchronous. Need a scalable
  way to deliver agent messages to 1000s of
  (wireless) platforms.
• Agent systems are often closed and require a lot
  of specialized agent technology. Email is a
  common denominator in coalition situations.

• By 2012 imagine free eGents attached to sensors,
  actuators, people, equipment, locations as
  pervasive observers actors
• Anyone with email can create an agent service
  that anyone else can use. New eGent apps can be
  downloaded to the field as situations change.

Approach

• Thesis Integration of agent technology with
  pervasive Web-ORB-Email backplanes is a route to
  making agent technology open, pervasive and
  robust.
• eGents are agents which communicate over email.
  eGents leverages pervasive, robust email
  infrastructure, inherits support for disconnected
  operations, message queueing, mobile users,
  firewalls, filtering, logging, and security.
  eGents use FIPA or KQML Agent Communication
  Language (ACL) encoded in XML. No ACL parser
  needed. Status Prototype, NEO demo, gridified,
  on wireless Palm. Spec submitted to FIPA. In
  progress packaging and numerous extensions.

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OBJS eGents Agents over Email

• eGents enabled Digital Assistants
• PDAs and ADAs (autonomous DAs) including sensors,
  actuators, cameras, recorders, range finders,
• are connected by wireless networking (cellular,
  radio) and
• associated with soldiers, observers, NGOs, ...
  vehicles, weapon systems, , bridges, buildings,
  ...
• to report status, make observations, take simple
  actions
• can dynamically accept new or revised tasks
• In the demo, eGents-enabled CoAX observers and
  equipment will ltexact vignette TBD monitor
  status of troops, observers, equipment, avoid
  unseen threatsgt
• Observations fed into battle-planning systems
  (e.g., process panel MBP) through the CoABS
  Grid and orders information fed back to the
  field.

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OBJS eGents Agents over Email
orders recommendations
observations subscriptions
Need fuel!
I see a tank!
Any threats?
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eGents interoperating with each other and with
an eGent-grid proxy
Might be on machine 2 or anywhere on LAN
or on grid-connected LAN
PSM client grid agent
Machine 2 perhaps installed at command post
Machine 3 perhaps installed at medevac unit
Machine 1 installed on evacuee
subscribe
inform
eGent grid agent proxy
PSM server eGent
PSM client eGent
other eGents
other eGents
other eGents
Grid
eGents platform
eGents platform
eGents platform
inform
inform
subscribe
inform
subscribe
subscribe
Java-based KVM-based - runs on Palm
uses J2ME CLDC 1.0 FCS (KVM), that is, Java for
devices runs on a "wireless" palm over the
CDPD digital cellular network
Email Server
All eGents can share one Email server or they
can each have their own or anything in between
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OBJS eGents Agents over Email
Miami demo standalone - 18 month demo
integrated w Process Panel MBP