JOINT RESEARCH PROJECTS

Conducted by KIMCOE research faculty and their collaborating partners.

•  Social & Information Network Models & Analysis
•  Visualization, Fusion, & Motion Tracking in Tactical Environments
•  Agent-based Threat Detection in Tactical Environments
•  B3AN Architecture, Prototype, & Component Integration
•  Integration of Threat Forecast Capabilities
•  Distributed Intelligent Agent Platform Evaluation
•  Software Engineering & Experimental Knowledge

We have been especially successful in the process of building an emerging, multidisciplinary field. We have attracted the "best and brightest" to create a community of experts to share ideas, directions, and technologies across multiple disciplines to help shape the developing knowledge fusion field and focus attention on its potential to solve Army problems.

Partners include world-class researchers from multiple traditional fields of study that include computer science, systems engineering, sensors, electrical engineering, and cognitive science. Our partners participate as panel member and speakers at KIMCOE workshops, present special seminars to KIMCOE students, perform basic research on KIMCOE projects, and serve as consultants to the program.

The fusion challenge to deliver situational understanding to the warrior is especially critical in complex, urban operations.  Although much progress has been made in fusing sensor data, the dynamic description of relationships among objects and events in context and the ability to draw inferences about threats remain elusive goals.   Today, synthesis and fusion of information for situational understanding on the battlefield are almost all done manually by analysts, with few supporting technology aids.

In contrast, KIMCOE and its partners at ARL, under the banner of the Brigade and Below Battlefield Awareness Network (B3AN), are developing new and innovative information technology tools (including complex information models and algorithms) that will automatically permit information flow to the warfighter on the battlefield. This includes human factors research and web technologies so as to gain deeper understanding of what is an effective field-based soldier-sensor balance and how best to use them together to achieve the strategic and tactical results required of our forward deployed troops. The results that the ARL and KIMCOE have obtained thus far are very promising, with some ready now for transition to Army programs.

The B3AN is a research case-study framework for Web services and technologies that address the need for situational awareness in urban operations.  The B3AN framework defines specific scenarios for focusing and integrating research concepts and tools from multiple research disciplines and institutions, and provides B3AN research teams a common military problem domain.  B3AN seeks to identify the temporal and geographic position of a brigade, recognize when relevant information sources (such as UAVs) enter that space, and in real-time, capture the streaming visual images from these sources as they move through the area of interest to the brigade.  The B3AN Fusion Node pulls together the information from multiple sources as it moves through the space, and continually streams the current situational awareness information to the soldier. 

B3AN research has focused  on applying  emerging technologies in Web service-based techniques and protocols; intelligent agents; image fusion; improvised explosive device (IED) threat assessment and prediction; and information fusion to address tactical information collection and battlefield reporting.