The problem of whole air mission modelling is part of a larger problem which is the problem of si... more The problem of whole air mission modelling is part of a larger problem which is the problem of simulating possible war-like scenarios in the air, sea, and on land. In such modelling systems one is required to model the behaviour of various actors and the resources that are available to them. One aspect of this problem is the modelling of a group of actors as a team and then modelling the coordinated behaviour of such a team to achieve a joint goal.
The emergence of large information systems has pushed software specification into the area of bus... more The emergence of large information systems has pushed software specification into the area of business modelling to adequately capture and consider business requirements. At the same time, there has been a move toward techniques for specifying the behaviours of and the knowledge associated with intelligent agents as these are increasingly found as important components of those information systems. This paper presents four software models useful for specifying the requirements of an agent oriented information system. Adopting a similar notation for each model smooths the transition between models. It will be shown that it is in the relationships between these models there is scope for capturing purposive descriptions that facilitate reuse at various levels. An example, from the domain of military simulation, that illustrates the model and its application is provided followed closely by a commentary on the importance of an explicit representation of the purpose for which a software component is intended. The aim is a modelling approach that unifies the business model, the use case model, the agent behavioural model and the domain model.
This paper reports experiences and outcomes of designing and developing an agent-based, autonomou... more This paper reports experiences and outcomes of designing and developing an agent-based, autonomous mission control system for an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). Most UAVs are not truly autonomous or even unmanned but are more correctly termed 'uninhabited' or 'remotely piloted'. This paper explores two quite different approaches for adding autonomous control to an existing UAV. Both designs were implemented using an agent-based language. The first takes a fairly standard approach, adding a layer over the flight control system to control the mission. The second takes the human metaphor of agency more seriously and implements an autonomous controller based on a model of human decision making widely referenced in the military command and control literature. Implementing these two designs allowed a comparison of their relative strengths and weaknesses. Preliminary findings indicate both the feasibility and usefulness of a human cognitive modelling approach to providing autonomous UAV control but indicate a number of important considerations. This paper also reports on the successful first flight trials of the Codarra Avatar UAV under the mission control of the agent and discusses the future flight test program.
This article reports on the design, implementation and testing of a mission management system for... more This article reports on the design, implementation and testing of a mission management system for a small, electric powered UAV -the Codarra Avatar. The system was designed and implemented using the agent-programming paradigm, which is a powerful, scalable and flexible framework for building autonomous systems. Specifically, we have used the JACK Intelligent Agents programming language. The system was integrated with an existing autopilot and auto-stabilisation system that performs basic flight control on the UAV. The mission management system performs without any human intervention, and represents a step forward in UAV autonomy. The use of agents as the design and development platform is particularly useful in view of future work involving teams, or perhaps swarms, of UAVs. Two agent designs inspired by different design principles will be described and compared. The simulation and actual flight tests will also be discussed. In addition to the experimental report, we provide a short conceptual discourse on autonomous agent and multi-agent systems, and how the proposed frameworks and concepts can apply to multi-UAV control.
In Australia, the Scientists-in-Schools program partners professional scientists with teachers fr... more In Australia, the Scientists-in-Schools program partners professional scientists with teachers from K-12 schools to improve early engagement and educational outcomes in the sciences and mathematics. An overview of the developing syllabus of a K-6 course resulting from the pairing of a senior AI researcher with teachers from a K-6 (primary) school is presented. Now entering its third year, the course introduces the basic concepts, vocabulary and history of science generally and AI specifically in a manner that emphasises student engagement and provides a challenging but age appropriate syllabus. Reflecting on the course at this time provides an action research basis for ongoing maturation of the syllabus, and the paper is presented in that light. * This work was a result of a professional collaboration conducted within the Scientists-in-Schools Program run by the Australian CSIRO.
Air Forces utilise simulation as a valuable tool to support training, operations analysis, missio... more Air Forces utilise simulation as a valuable tool to support training, operations analysis, mission rehearsal, and capability development. The virtual environments created in these simulations are cheap, safe, configurable, and constrained in ways that the real world is not. Inhabiting these virtual worlds are varying mixes of computer generated forces and human participants cooperating with or opposing each other. In the real world, with its dangerous, continuous, dynamic, real-time complexity, humans have such huge advantages over robotic systems that state of the art uninhabited combat air vehicle systems are still many years (or decades) away.
Mainstream visual psychology presents a 'sense then infer' account of vision that is analogous to... more Mainstream visual psychology presents a 'sense then infer' account of vision that is analogous to the 'sense then infer' processing that characterises the agent intention recognition literature. From ecological psychology comes Gibson's theory of visual perception that highlights the importance of the environment in explaining the nature of vision and recognition and claims that higher order structures are directly accessible. This theory can be used as the stepping-off point for an account of intention recognition and the means by which it might be modelled. Furthermore, the capacity for virtual environments to be designed 'agent friendly' provides yet another dimension of design freedom. When accompanied by an explicit model of perception the intention recognition problem can be cast as a software design problem. The resulting design patterns provide useful options for modelling intention recognition in intelligent agent systems.
Mainstreaming and industrialising agent technologies requires suitable methodological and technol... more Mainstreaming and industrialising agent technologies requires suitable methodological and technological support for the various engineering activities associated with managing the complexity of any software system development. Despite its origins in object oriented software engineering the UML provides a rich and extensible set of modelling constructs that can be applied to agent oriented technologies. This paper provides details of extensions to the UML for the design of agents that are to be implemented in the JACK language. These extensions provide the capacity to model the behaviour of agents for the purposes of design and, though the extensions are language specific, future generalisation and application to other agent languages can be supported as a industry-wide consensus about the nature of agency emerges over the next few years. This research builds on previously proposed extensions to the UML and moves a step closer to the goal of providing through-life engineering support to agent oriented systems development. This work is motivated by a pressing need to maintain, modify, develop and deploy existing and future agent based simulations of military operations for the Australian Defence Force. *
Sensor fusion is often not the focus of operational analysis, but the increased connectivity and ... more Sensor fusion is often not the focus of operational analysis, but the increased connectivity and information sharing of a network enabled warfare environment and platforms with sophisticated on-board sensor fusion capabilities makes it an important consideration for military analysts.
that highlights the importance of the environment in explaining the nature of vision and recognit... more that highlights the importance of the environment in explaining the nature of vision and recognition and claims that higher order structures are directly accessible. This theory can be used as the stepping-off point for an account of intention recognition and the means by which it might be modelled. Furthermore, the capacity for virtual environments to be designed 'agent friendly' provides yet another dimension of design freedom. When accompanied by an explicit model of perception the intention recognition problem can be cast as a software design problem. The resulting design patterns provide useful options for modelling intention recognition in intelligent agent systems.
A range of agent implementation technologies are reviewed according to five user-based criteria a... more A range of agent implementation technologies are reviewed according to five user-based criteria and via a comparison with object-oriented programming. The comparison with OO shows that some parts of object technology are a candidate implementation technique for some parts of agent systems. However, many other non-object-based implementation techniques may be just as useful. Also, for agents with mentalistic attitudes, the high-level specification of agent behavior requires numerous concepts outside the object paradigm; e.g. plans, communication, intentions, roles, and teams.
Research and analysis of military operations using mathematical modelling requires a diverse blen... more Research and analysis of military operations using mathematical modelling requires a diverse blend of qualities of researchers, embracing vehicle performance and physical environment modelling, software engineering, simulation techniques and OR techniques which must all be tailored to achieve the required research outcomes.
All technology tends toward obsolescence. The process is accelerated when maintenance, update, an... more All technology tends toward obsolescence. The process is accelerated when maintenance, update, and upgrade, are not fully addressed. By the early 90's it was clear that maintaining the large simulation codes 1 was untenable. The Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF), as the primary customer, often requires rapid answers to questions. Response times to requests that required even superficial modification of the software had blown out to several months. The brick wall of technology obsolescence had been hit. It was simply not possible to manage the complexity of the existing models. This was due to the old technology computer languages in which they were written and to the lack of professional software engineering practices 2 . Redressing this situation required a paradigm shift in tools, languages, and practices. The technology shift was precipitated by a decision to transition some aspects of the modelling and simulation activities toward what was then an embryonic emerging technology -intelligent agents. At the time intelligent agent technologies were being examined for the utility in modeling situation awareness but it was soon apparent that they were appropriate for the entire spectrum of military decision-making.
With concurrency, mobility, distribution, autonomy and the other properties associated with intel... more With concurrency, mobility, distribution, autonomy and the other properties associated with intelligent software agents, the operation of software systems is becoming increasingly difficult to specify, define, document, test or describe by reference to the design alone. This is particularly true during the stages of software development when communication of aspects of the software to people with little or no understanding of software design must occur.
The problem of whole air mission modelling is part of a larger problem which is the problem of si... more The problem of whole air mission modelling is part of a larger problem which is the problem of simulating possible war-like scenarios in the air, sea, and on land. In such modelling systems one is required to model the behaviour of various actors and the resources that are available to them. One aspect of this problem is the modelling of a group of actors as a team and then modelling the coordinated behaviour of such a team to achieve a joint goal.
The emergence of large information systems has pushed software specification into the area of bus... more The emergence of large information systems has pushed software specification into the area of business modelling to adequately capture and consider business requirements. At the same time, there has been a move toward techniques for specifying the behaviours of and the knowledge associated with intelligent agents as these are increasingly found as important components of those information systems. This paper presents four software models useful for specifying the requirements of an agent oriented information system. Adopting a similar notation for each model smooths the transition between models. It will be shown that it is in the relationships between these models there is scope for capturing purposive descriptions that facilitate reuse at various levels. An example, from the domain of military simulation, that illustrates the model and its application is provided followed closely by a commentary on the importance of an explicit representation of the purpose for which a software component is intended. The aim is a modelling approach that unifies the business model, the use case model, the agent behavioural model and the domain model.
This paper reports experiences and outcomes of designing and developing an agent-based, autonomou... more This paper reports experiences and outcomes of designing and developing an agent-based, autonomous mission control system for an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). Most UAVs are not truly autonomous or even unmanned but are more correctly termed 'uninhabited' or 'remotely piloted'. This paper explores two quite different approaches for adding autonomous control to an existing UAV. Both designs were implemented using an agent-based language. The first takes a fairly standard approach, adding a layer over the flight control system to control the mission. The second takes the human metaphor of agency more seriously and implements an autonomous controller based on a model of human decision making widely referenced in the military command and control literature. Implementing these two designs allowed a comparison of their relative strengths and weaknesses. Preliminary findings indicate both the feasibility and usefulness of a human cognitive modelling approach to providing autonomous UAV control but indicate a number of important considerations. This paper also reports on the successful first flight trials of the Codarra Avatar UAV under the mission control of the agent and discusses the future flight test program.
This article reports on the design, implementation and testing of a mission management system for... more This article reports on the design, implementation and testing of a mission management system for a small, electric powered UAV -the Codarra Avatar. The system was designed and implemented using the agent-programming paradigm, which is a powerful, scalable and flexible framework for building autonomous systems. Specifically, we have used the JACK Intelligent Agents programming language. The system was integrated with an existing autopilot and auto-stabilisation system that performs basic flight control on the UAV. The mission management system performs without any human intervention, and represents a step forward in UAV autonomy. The use of agents as the design and development platform is particularly useful in view of future work involving teams, or perhaps swarms, of UAVs. Two agent designs inspired by different design principles will be described and compared. The simulation and actual flight tests will also be discussed. In addition to the experimental report, we provide a short conceptual discourse on autonomous agent and multi-agent systems, and how the proposed frameworks and concepts can apply to multi-UAV control.
In Australia, the Scientists-in-Schools program partners professional scientists with teachers fr... more In Australia, the Scientists-in-Schools program partners professional scientists with teachers from K-12 schools to improve early engagement and educational outcomes in the sciences and mathematics. An overview of the developing syllabus of a K-6 course resulting from the pairing of a senior AI researcher with teachers from a K-6 (primary) school is presented. Now entering its third year, the course introduces the basic concepts, vocabulary and history of science generally and AI specifically in a manner that emphasises student engagement and provides a challenging but age appropriate syllabus. Reflecting on the course at this time provides an action research basis for ongoing maturation of the syllabus, and the paper is presented in that light. * This work was a result of a professional collaboration conducted within the Scientists-in-Schools Program run by the Australian CSIRO.
Air Forces utilise simulation as a valuable tool to support training, operations analysis, missio... more Air Forces utilise simulation as a valuable tool to support training, operations analysis, mission rehearsal, and capability development. The virtual environments created in these simulations are cheap, safe, configurable, and constrained in ways that the real world is not. Inhabiting these virtual worlds are varying mixes of computer generated forces and human participants cooperating with or opposing each other. In the real world, with its dangerous, continuous, dynamic, real-time complexity, humans have such huge advantages over robotic systems that state of the art uninhabited combat air vehicle systems are still many years (or decades) away.
Mainstream visual psychology presents a 'sense then infer' account of vision that is analogous to... more Mainstream visual psychology presents a 'sense then infer' account of vision that is analogous to the 'sense then infer' processing that characterises the agent intention recognition literature. From ecological psychology comes Gibson's theory of visual perception that highlights the importance of the environment in explaining the nature of vision and recognition and claims that higher order structures are directly accessible. This theory can be used as the stepping-off point for an account of intention recognition and the means by which it might be modelled. Furthermore, the capacity for virtual environments to be designed 'agent friendly' provides yet another dimension of design freedom. When accompanied by an explicit model of perception the intention recognition problem can be cast as a software design problem. The resulting design patterns provide useful options for modelling intention recognition in intelligent agent systems.
Mainstreaming and industrialising agent technologies requires suitable methodological and technol... more Mainstreaming and industrialising agent technologies requires suitable methodological and technological support for the various engineering activities associated with managing the complexity of any software system development. Despite its origins in object oriented software engineering the UML provides a rich and extensible set of modelling constructs that can be applied to agent oriented technologies. This paper provides details of extensions to the UML for the design of agents that are to be implemented in the JACK language. These extensions provide the capacity to model the behaviour of agents for the purposes of design and, though the extensions are language specific, future generalisation and application to other agent languages can be supported as a industry-wide consensus about the nature of agency emerges over the next few years. This research builds on previously proposed extensions to the UML and moves a step closer to the goal of providing through-life engineering support to agent oriented systems development. This work is motivated by a pressing need to maintain, modify, develop and deploy existing and future agent based simulations of military operations for the Australian Defence Force. *
Sensor fusion is often not the focus of operational analysis, but the increased connectivity and ... more Sensor fusion is often not the focus of operational analysis, but the increased connectivity and information sharing of a network enabled warfare environment and platforms with sophisticated on-board sensor fusion capabilities makes it an important consideration for military analysts.
that highlights the importance of the environment in explaining the nature of vision and recognit... more that highlights the importance of the environment in explaining the nature of vision and recognition and claims that higher order structures are directly accessible. This theory can be used as the stepping-off point for an account of intention recognition and the means by which it might be modelled. Furthermore, the capacity for virtual environments to be designed 'agent friendly' provides yet another dimension of design freedom. When accompanied by an explicit model of perception the intention recognition problem can be cast as a software design problem. The resulting design patterns provide useful options for modelling intention recognition in intelligent agent systems.
A range of agent implementation technologies are reviewed according to five user-based criteria a... more A range of agent implementation technologies are reviewed according to five user-based criteria and via a comparison with object-oriented programming. The comparison with OO shows that some parts of object technology are a candidate implementation technique for some parts of agent systems. However, many other non-object-based implementation techniques may be just as useful. Also, for agents with mentalistic attitudes, the high-level specification of agent behavior requires numerous concepts outside the object paradigm; e.g. plans, communication, intentions, roles, and teams.
Research and analysis of military operations using mathematical modelling requires a diverse blen... more Research and analysis of military operations using mathematical modelling requires a diverse blend of qualities of researchers, embracing vehicle performance and physical environment modelling, software engineering, simulation techniques and OR techniques which must all be tailored to achieve the required research outcomes.
All technology tends toward obsolescence. The process is accelerated when maintenance, update, an... more All technology tends toward obsolescence. The process is accelerated when maintenance, update, and upgrade, are not fully addressed. By the early 90's it was clear that maintaining the large simulation codes 1 was untenable. The Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF), as the primary customer, often requires rapid answers to questions. Response times to requests that required even superficial modification of the software had blown out to several months. The brick wall of technology obsolescence had been hit. It was simply not possible to manage the complexity of the existing models. This was due to the old technology computer languages in which they were written and to the lack of professional software engineering practices 2 . Redressing this situation required a paradigm shift in tools, languages, and practices. The technology shift was precipitated by a decision to transition some aspects of the modelling and simulation activities toward what was then an embryonic emerging technology -intelligent agents. At the time intelligent agent technologies were being examined for the utility in modeling situation awareness but it was soon apparent that they were appropriate for the entire spectrum of military decision-making.
With concurrency, mobility, distribution, autonomy and the other properties associated with intel... more With concurrency, mobility, distribution, autonomy and the other properties associated with intelligent software agents, the operation of software systems is becoming increasingly difficult to specify, define, document, test or describe by reference to the design alone. This is particularly true during the stages of software development when communication of aspects of the software to people with little or no understanding of software design must occur.
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Papers by Clinton Heinze