In 2001 the ActComm team will implement the final version of the demonstration testbed. The scenario employed will be essentially the same as that used in the 1999 demonstration. However, we will extend the scenario to include more complex queries and network configurations to highlight how recent progress in the ActComm research areas can address such situations. We will demonstrate advances in the following areas: ad hoc routing, network sensing, task scheduling, resource control, information clustering, robotic communication relay, and the agent architecture. In order to sufficiently highlight the technical merit of individual technologies, we will not present the testbed as an integrated single demonstration. Rather, we will present the overall scenario followed by individual technology demonstrations that will include a specific description of how the technology fits into the scenario.
The Urban Warfare scenario is a mission where a platoon is sent into an urban environment to (1) observe a building that is a known location for insurgent activity, (2) wait until important insurgents are inside, and (3) then seize the building and its occupants. This mission involves three military entities.
Individual warfighter. Each warfighter has a wireless computing device and makes reports about what is happening in the field (via SALUTE). The reports go through the platoon leader for approval and forwarding to BN HQ. The warfighters are on foot.
Platoon leader. The platoon leader has the same wireless computing device as the warfighters. The platoon leader receives and forwards SALUTE reports from the warfighters, generates additional SALUTE reports for their own observations, and queries local and remote databases (e.g., BGW) for mission-relevant information. The platoon leader performs planning and coordination for the local team. The platoon leader is most likely on foot, but might have a vehicle. In any case, there is some vehicle that serves as a gateway between the platoon and BN HQ (e.g., the vehicle would have the same wireless computing device as the soldiers plus a satellite uplink to the rest of the military network, and would forward data traffic in either direction as needed).
BN HQ. BN HQ has some number of analysts (in particular, the S2-intelligence office and the S3-operations office) who draft the original mission plan, get the battalion commander's approval, issue the orders to the platoon, and update the plan based on what happens on the ground. The analysts review the SALUTE reports coming back from the field and examine a wide range of other data sources (BGW, newsfeed, telephone call transcripts, etc.) during the planning and re-planning phases. BN HQ is a tent encampment, but can move. A real BN HQ can move frequently.
The mission begins when the platoon receives orders from Battalion HQ to observe and secure the building. The mission then can be divided into four phases.
Phase One: Going to the building. The platoon moves toward the target building and provides updates along the way. The current locations of the platoon members are reported automatically to BN HQ. Other information, such as vehicle activity, is entered and reported manually. In both cases, the reports are sent back as SALUTE records. Observations from individual soldiers are sent first to the platoon leader, who reviews them and forwards some of them to BN HQ. During this phase, a small group of soldiers needs to temporarily move out of (wireless transmission) range of the other soldiers. RPI's network-sensing software detects that the soldiers are moving out of range, and notifies the messaging system so that any pending reports (e.g. periodic ammunition and water level reports) can be transferred off of the soldier's machines. RPI's software also notifies the soldiers of the impending network disconnection. A soldier moving out of range can choose to deploy a robotic communication relay, which is capable of moving about the terrain to maintain connectivity for the soldier. Soldiers continue to enter observations, even when out of range (e.g., if they have not deployed a robotic relay). The active-messaging system queues these observations at the disconnection boundary, and transmits them to BN HQ as soon as the soldiers move back into range and the disconnection goes away.
To further demonstrate network disconnections, the soldiers might take different routes to the target building. The feasibility of doing this will depend on which building we use at Dartmouth, and whether we can maintain at least partial contact with a gateway machine during the journey to that building.
This phase of the demo primarily demonstrates (1) The routing algorithms (APRL, STARA, GPSR, and AODV will be tested individually) which maintain network connectivity among the moving soldiers, (2) RPI's network-sensing algorithms, which detect the impending disconnection, (3) the robotic communication relay, and (4) the simple active-network software, which allows the observations (wrapped inside mobile agents) to queue themselves up at the network-disconnection boundary.
Phase Two: Observation. The soldiers observe the activity in and near the building, and send back appropriate SALUTE reports. In particular, a person enters the building. The soldiers send a description of the person (as SALUTE reports) to BN HQ. BN HQ searches the BGW and SALUTE databases to determine if any of the descriptions match known insurgent leaders (e.g., an insurgent leader might have some noticeable physical attribute such as a scar). BN HQ sends photographs of any insurgent leaders that match the description to the soldiers. The soldiers confirm whether the person they saw is in fact one of the insurgent leaders in the pictures.
In the demo, the person turns out to be an insurgent leader. Thus BN HQ knows that one of the important insurgent leaders is now in the building. During this phase, the platoon leader will also make some simple queries against the SALUTE and BGW databases. For example, after the mission changes from observing to securing the building, are there other platoons close enough to help secure the building? Where are the closest medical teams? Have other bad guys been sighted at other locations within the city?
Phase I (Going to the building) and Phase II (Observation) will overlap. In particular, the small group that breaks away from the main group will be the group that sees the first bad guy enter the building, and they will see the first bad guy while they are disconnected from the network. This will demonstrate how critical it is to queue up messages (observations) at the disconnection boundary, and then transmit them the rest of the way as soon as the disconnection goes away.
This phase of the demo primarily demonstrates Dartmouth's mobile-agent system D'Agents, which is used to implement all of the database interfaces and application-specific queries.
Phase three: Information gathering (persistent and complex queries). The analysts in BN HQ will have established persistent queries against several local and remote databases (the local data sources may have different bandwidth available than remote machines). These persistent queries search for any new information relevant to the insurgent group (and the building itself). At some point, a new phone-call transcript in the Intelligence Summary database matches the persistent query (e.g., it originates from or goes to the building in question, or the building's geographic area in the case of a cell phone, and appears to mention insurgent activity.) The analysts then do additional queries against the other databases to see if the phone call was made by one of the insurgent leaders. For example, the analyst might search both the news and BGW databases to see if any of the names mentioned in the phone call are aliases for insurgent leaders or otherwise associated with the insurgency leadership. At this point, in the demo, the phone call does originate from a (different) insurgent leader inside the same building, so Battalion HQ now knows that two insurgent leaders are in the building. At this point, Battalion HQ orders the platoon to secure the building and capture its occupants.
This phase of the demo involves more complex queries than the previous phase, and primarily demonstrates (1) an analyst’s GUI for clustering algorithms for graphically organizing query results, (2) MACE, which is a visual construction environment that a non-programmer can use to construct complex query agents, (3) Serval, which is an agent-based retrieval engine for text documents, (4) task ordering algorithms in which the time it takes an agent to complete a set of tasks is minimized, and (5) resource control in where agents with higher priority tasks are given preference through a market-based resource allocation algorithm.
Phase four: Battalion HQ moves. Once the platoon has captured the building (not explicitly shown in the demo), the Battalion HQ relocates for the sake of some future mission. The HQ shuts down its computers, moves to the new location, and restarts all the computers. The internal HQ network re-establishes itself "instantly" after the machines power up, due to Aprl's ability to dynamically discover and set up network routes. This phase again demonstrates the routing algorithms.