The GRACE Consortium - EUCLID RTP 6.1

<body stylesrc="HomePage/Default.html"> <h1 ALIGN="center"><strong>EUCLID RTP 6.1</strong></h1> <hr> <p ALIGN="center"><strong><a href="HomePage/Objectives/Objectives.html">Objectives</a><br> <a href="HomePage/Recomend/Recomendations.html">Recommendations</a><br> <a href="HomePage/Conclusions/Conclusions.html">Conclusions</a></strong></p> <hr> <p ALIGN="center"><strong>NB: This site is best viewed with a Frame enabled browser.</strong></p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">EUCLID (<strong>EU</strong>ropean <strong>C</strong>o-operation for the <strong>L</strong>ong term <strong>I</strong>n <strong>D</strong>efence) is a collaborative military research programme initiated by the Western European Armaments Group. It is divided into a number of CEPAs (Common European Priority Areas), of which CEPA 6 addresses Advanced Information Processing and Communications. CEPA 6 is further divided into a number of Research and Technology Projects (RTPs). </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The objective of EUCLID RTP 6.1 is to accelerate the application of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and advanced software engineering and Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) techniques to Command, Control, Communications and Intelligence (C<font SIZE="2"><sup>3</sup></font>I) systems. </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The secondary objectives are:</p> <ul> <li><p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">to develop intelligent tools for automated report analysis and time-critical decision support, planning and tasking (DSPT) in the army and naval domains</p> </li> <li><p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">to test the architecture and tools using simulations representing a naval landing force scenario and an army peace enforcement scenario</p> </li> <li><p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">to define and implement a workstation architecture able to accommodate existing and emerging methods and tools, and to forge new standards</p> </li> <li><p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">to encourage European collaboration in C<font SIZE="2"><sup>3</sup></font>I research and development.</p> </li> </ul> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">RTP 6.1 is a highly collaborative project. Led by <a href="http://www.logica.com">Logica UK Limited</a>, it is undertaken by the GRACE Consortium (Grouping for Research into Advanced C<sup>3</sup>I for Europe) comprising 17 companies from 7 nations: Denmark, France, Italy, Norway, the Netherlands, Spain and the UK. The clients for the work are seven Ministries of Defence (MoDs) represented by a Management Group (MG), chaired by the UKs Defence Evaluation and Research Agency (DERA), Malvern.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">EUCLID RTP 6.1 has produced an integrated demonstrator featuring two key innovations:</p> <ul> <li><p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">an agent-based architecture to integrate diverse AI based applications, and</p> </li> <li><p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">an integrated suite of command decision support tools applying AI technologies.</p> </li> </ul> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The integration architecture comprises:</p> <ul> <li><p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"><a href="Architecture/Cable/public/Default.htm">CABLE</a> for developing and running software structured as multiple co-operating intelligent agents. </p> </li> <li><p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"><a href="Architecture/FIONA/public/Default.htm">FIONA</a> to provide the user interface between one or more users and multiple agents. </p> </li> </ul> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Both <a href="Architecture/Cable/public/Default.htm">CABLE</a> and <a href="Architecture/FIONA/public/Default.htm">FIONA</a> embrace the CORBA standard enabling software to be distributed at run-time across a mixed network of Sun Solaris and PC Windows-NT workstations. <a href="Architecture/Cable/public/Default.htm">CABLE</a>, <a href="Architecture/FIONA/public/Default.htm">FIONA</a> and the FUN (Functional Unit) Methodology for specifying and designing multi-agent systems are particularly well suited to distributed, intelligent decision support and modelling and simulation applications, whether military or not. At the time of writing 10 new projects, most in the UK, have exploited this architecture, with a total value of 2 MECU (Ł1.4M).</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The project has developed tools using a wide range of AI techniques, to support different aspects of army and naval situation assessment and planning:</p> <ul> <li><p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">report analysis and construction of a wide area picture</p> </li> <li><p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">a common object model used across all tools to represent situation and encyclopaedic data</p> </li> <li><p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">analysis of enemy behaviours and generation of alerts</p> </li> <li><p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">map display, terrain analysis and calculation of intervisibility areas</p> </li> <li><p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">manoeuvre planning</p> </li> <li><p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">planning, scheduling and synchronisation</p> </li> <li><p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">what-if simulation</p> </li> <li><p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">scheduling and time constraint calculations</p> </li> <li><p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">resource allocation and engagement co-ordination.</p> </li> </ul> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The tools were designed to support the human command team, by automating only those aspects of a task that are better suited to the machine. The benefits typically found from using AI techniques, compared with manual planning, are:</p> <ul> <li><p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">automatic alerting to significant events or changes in the situation</p> </li> <li><p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">quicker planning, while considering more alternative plans</p> </li> <li><p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">better compliance with complex constraints on time, space, terrain and resources.</p> </li> </ul> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The project was carried out between Autumn 1993 and Autumn 1998. The project has developed about 800,000 lines of new C++ code, 14 different C<sup>3</sup>I tools and a powerful integration architecture. These have been developed using 125 man years of effort at a cost overall of around 16 MECU to the participating MoDs and 5 MECU to the participating companies. It is therefore important that all participating MoDs and companies achieve a high level of exploitation of the software and techniques developed. A programme re-using just 10% of the RTP 6.1 software - 1 or 2 tools and 80,000 lines of code - will potentially save 10 man years effort.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It is expected that the main route for exploitation will be into applied research programmes and technology demonstrators within national military research programmes. These need to adapt the RTP 6.1 work to particular national military applications, systems and architectures. </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">There are two distinct elements of the work that can be exploited - the architecture (<a href="Architecture/Cable/public/Default.htm">CABLE</a>/<a href="Architecture/FIONA/public/Default.htm">FIONA</a>) and the tools. Re-using individual tools is relatively easy, since in most cases the novel techniques used are embodied in C++ code that is independent of the RTP 6.1 architecture. Exploiting the multi-agent architecture is a bigger commitment, which may be difficult in existing operational systems, but which provides major advantages in terms of ease of integration and of distribution over a heterogeneous architecture supporting multiple users. These are pre-requisites for next generation systems. </p> <ul> <li><p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The RTP 6.1 demonstrator will be available for demonstrations at Logicas Cambridge, UK office to June 2000. Partial demonstrators are available in other GRACE companies.</p> </li> <li><p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Full sets of paper documentation are available in Logica, DERA Malvern and each participating MoD. Partial documentation sets are available in other GRACE companies.</p> </li> <li><p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">A CD of project documents and software is available to participating companies and MoDs from Logica.</p> </li> <li><p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">An <a href="Repository/public/FTPServer/ftpServer.html">FTP site</a> (with password protection) is available to participating companies and MoDs for downloading software and documents.</p> </li> </ul> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">RTP 6.1 has demonstrated what can be achieved today by integrating COTS software, and applying and adapting AI techniques to C<sup>3</sup>I. Two general recommendations emerge:</p> <ul> <li><p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">There is no one AI technique, or family of techniques, to solve all problems: for each problem tackled, a suitable AI technique must be selected, even though this means the final system uses a wide range of different techniques working together</p> </li> <li><p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Architectures and standards need to enable software to be distributed over a heterogeneous network of computers, to support multiple, co-operating users and to simplify integration of legacy, COTS and new software from different sources.</p> </li> </ul> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">A service-based multi-agent architecture incorporating a range of AI techniques can meet these requirements.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">See also the consortiums <strong><a href="HomePage/Objectives/Objectives.html">Objectives</a>, <a href="HomePage/Recomend/Recomendations.html">Recommendations</a>, and <a href="HomePage/Conclusions/Conclusions.html">Conclusions</a>.</strong></p>  <div align="center"><center> <table border="5" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="360" bordercolor="#C0C0C0" bordercolordark="#808080" bordercolorlight="#C0C0C0"> <tr> <td align="center" width="110"><a href="index.html" target="_top"><img src="Graphics/footer/HomePage.gif" alt="Home Page" align="top" border="0" WIDTH="100" HEIGHT="25"></a></td> <td align="center" width="110"><a href="Contents/Default.html" target="Display"><img src="Graphics/footer/Contents.gif" alt="Contents" align="top" border="0" WIDTH="100" HEIGHT="25"></a></td> <td align="center" width="110"><a href="Help/Help.html" target="Display"><img src="Graphics/footer/Help.gif" alt="Help" align="top" border="0" WIDTH="100" HEIGHT="25"></a></td> </tr> </table> </center></div> <hr noshade color="#C0C0C0"> <div align="center"><center> <table border="0" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0" width="95%"> <tr> <td width="100"></td> <td align="center" valign="top" width="440">Produced by: Peter Martin / Russell Gordon / Mike Pockney<br> Updated: 01 April 1999<br> Copyright Logica 1999</td> <td align="right" width="100"><a href="http://www.logica.com/" target="display"><img src="Graphics/logos/logica.gif" alt="Logica" align="right" hspace="0" border="0" WIDTH="100" HEIGHT="40"></a></td> </tr> </table> </center></div>  </body>