Kyle Usbeck

Airborne sensor platforms are becoming increasingly significant for both civilian and military operations; yet, at present, their sensors are typically idle for much of their flight time, e.g., while the sensor-equipped platform is in transit to and from the locations of sensing tasks. The sensing needs of many other potential information consumers might thus be served by sharing such sensors, thereby allowing other information consumers to opportunistically task them during their otherwise… Show more

Airborne sensor platforms are becoming increasingly significant for both civilian and military operations; yet, at present, their sensors are typically idle for much of their flight time, e.g., while the sensor-equipped platform is in transit to and from the locations of sensing tasks. The sensing needs of many other potential information consumers might thus be served by sharing such sensors, thereby allowing other information consumers to opportunistically task them during their otherwise unscheduled time, as well as enabling other improvements, such as decreasing the number of platforms needed to achieve a goal and increasing the resilience of sensor tasks through duplication. We have implemented a prototype system realizing these goals in Mission-Driven Tasking of Information Producers (MTIP), which leverages an agent-based representation of tasks and sensors to enable fast, effective, and adaptive opportunistic sharing of airborne sensors. Using a simulated large-scale disaster-response scenario populated with publicly available Geographic Information System (GIS) datasets, we demonstrate that correlations in task location are likely to lead to a high degree of potential for sensor-sharing. We then validate that our implementation of MTIP can successfully carry out such sharing, showing that it increases the number of sensor tasks served, reduces the number of platforms required to serve a given set of sensor tasks, and adapts well to radical changes in flight path. Show less

Small unmanned vehicles support many mission critical tasks. However, the provenance of these systems is usually not known, devices may be deployed in contested environments, and operators are often not computer system experts. Yet, the benefits of these systems outweigh the risks, and critical tasks and data are delegated to these systems without a sound basis for assessing trust. This paper describes an approach that can determine an operator’s trust in a mission system and applies continuous… Show more

Small unmanned vehicles support many mission critical tasks. However, the provenance of these systems is usually not known, devices may be deployed in contested environments, and operators are often not computer system experts. Yet, the benefits of these systems outweigh the risks, and critical tasks and data are delegated to these systems without a sound basis for assessing trust. This paper describes an approach that can determine an operator’s trust in a mission system and applies continuous monitoring to indicate if the performance is within a trusted operating region. In an early prototype we (a) define a multi-dimensional trusted operating region for a given mission, (b) monitor the system in-mission, and (c) detect when anomalous effects put the mission at risk. Show less

Airborne sensor platforms are becoming increasingly significant for both civilian and military operations, yet at present their sensors are typically idle for much of their flight time. Opportunistic sensor sharing, e.g., via the Mission-Driven Tasking of Information Producers (MTIP) can greatly improve sensor utilization, both decreasing the number of platforms needed to achieve a goal and increasing sensor efficacy. Dynamically changing environments, however, are likely to rapidly render any… Show more

Airborne sensor platforms are becoming increasingly significant for both civilian and military operations, yet at present their sensors are typically idle for much of their flight time. Opportunistic sensor sharing, e.g., via the Mission-Driven Tasking of Information Producers (MTIP) can greatly improve sensor utilization, both decreasing the number of platforms needed to achieve a goal and increasing sensor efficacy. Dynamically changing environments, however, are likely to rapidly render any initial plan obsolete. In this paper, we address the challenge of adaptive reallocation of sensor sharing tasks, demonstrating how the adaptable sensor sharing of MTIP can provide significant performance improvements in a large-scale disaster response scenario, as well as identifying areas of inefficiency that are likely to benefit from further improvement. Show less

Airborne sensors are often idle for much of their flight, e.g., while the platform carrying them is in transit to and from the locations of sensor tasks. The sensing needs of many other potential information consumers might thus be served by sharing such sensors, allowing other information consumers to opportunistically task them during their otherwise unscheduled time. Toward this end, we have developed Mission-Driven Tasking of Information Producers (MTIP), a prototype system for… Show more

Airborne sensors are often idle for much of their flight, e.g., while the platform carrying them is in transit to and from the locations of sensor tasks. The sensing needs of many other potential information consumers might thus be served by sharing such sensors, allowing other information consumers to opportunistically task them during their otherwise unscheduled time. Toward this end, we have developed Mission-Driven Tasking of Information Producers (MTIP), a prototype system for opportunistic sharing of airborne sensors. This paper describes its implementation as an agent-based task allocation system on top of the Marti Quality of Service (QoS)-managed publish-subscribe information management system, and presents simulations of a disaster response scenario demonstrating how MTIP can increase the number of sensor tasks served as well as reducing the number of UAVs required to serve a given set of … Show less

To make appropriate, timely decisions in the field, Situational Awareness (SA) needs to be conveyed in a decentralized manner to the users at the edge of the network as well as at operations centers. Sharing real-time SA efficiently between command centers and operational troops poses many challenges, including handling heterogeneous and dynamic networks, resource constraints, and varying needs for the collection, dissemination, and display of information, as well as recording that… Show more

To make appropriate, timely decisions in the field, Situational Awareness (SA) needs to be conveyed in a decentralized manner to the users at the edge of the network as well as at operations centers. Sharing real-time SA efficiently between command centers and operational troops poses many challenges, including handling heterogeneous and dynamic networks, resource constraints, and varying needs for the collection, dissemination, and display of information, as well as recording that information.
A mapping application that allows teams to share relevant geospatial information efficiently and to communicate effectively with one another and command centers has wide applicability to many vertical markets across the Department of Defense, as well as a wide variety of federal, state local, and non-profit agencies that need to share locations, text, photos, and video.
This paper describes the Android Team …
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Long-lived complex electromechanical systems, such as vehicles or industrial machinery, often need to be adapted for new uses or new environments. Adapting the design for such a system is frequently complicated by the fact that they are often tightly integrated, such that any change will have consequences throughout the design, and must take many different aspects of the system into consideration. Functional blueprints simplify adaptation by incorporating the reasons for design decisions and… Show more

Long-lived complex electromechanical systems, such as vehicles or industrial machinery, often need to be adapted for new uses or new environments. Adapting the design for such a system is frequently complicated by the fact that they are often tightly integrated, such that any change will have consequences throughout the design, and must take many different aspects of the system into consideration. Functional blueprints simplify adaptation by incorporating the reasons for design decisions and their consequences directly into the specification of a system. This allows a human designer to be supported by automated reasoning that can identify potential conflicts, suggest design fixes, and propagate changes implicit in the choices of the designer. This chapter presents the functional blueprints approach in detail, including both review of prior work and new results. Show less

The effectiveness of ground-based, wireless tactical data networks is often constrained by limitations such as communication range and line-of-sight. SATCOM is not always available because it is relatively expensive and highly contended. Data ferrying is an alternative method of data transfer in which data is uploaded from one network to a manned or unmanned vehicle, then the vehicle is driven or flown to within range of a second network where the data can be downloaded. Data ferrying via… Show more

The effectiveness of ground-based, wireless tactical data networks is often constrained by limitations such as communication range and line-of-sight. SATCOM is not always available because it is relatively expensive and highly contended. Data ferrying is an alternative method of data transfer in which data is uploaded from one network to a manned or unmanned vehicle, then the vehicle is driven or flown to within range of a second network where the data can be downloaded. Data ferrying via Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) can transport data over very rugged terrain without risking the safety of a human courier. This paper describes an implementation of data ferrying to provide low-cost, effective data communications between remote ground units and Forward Operating Bases in austere environments. It describes a field experiment in which a ground vehicle was used to wirelessly ferry data in a realistic scenario …
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In an environment increasingly saturated with computing devices, it is desirable for some services to be distributed, executing via local interactions between devices. Creating fast, flexible and dynamic distributed services requires a general model of function calls distributed over space–time. Prior models, however, have either depended strongly on large-scale Internet infrastructure or have restrictions in the scope or resolution of space–time for inputs, outputs or evaluation of the… Show more

In an environment increasingly saturated with computing devices, it is desirable for some services to be distributed, executing via local interactions between devices. Creating fast, flexible and dynamic distributed services requires a general model of function calls distributed over space–time. Prior models, however, have either depended strongly on large-scale Internet infrastructure or have restrictions in the scope or resolution of space–time for inputs, outputs or evaluation of the function. We address this by providing a formal general model of function calls over space–time. We then fully realize a practical model of space–time function calls, based in the Proto language and present both theoretical and empirical results. Finally, we show how our results for Proto generalize into implications for any model of distributed computing. Show less

The recent growth of agent-based software systems was achieved without the development of a reference architecture. From a software engineering standpoint, a reference architecture is necessary to compare, evaluate, and integrate past, current, and future agent-based software systems. The agent systems reference architecture (ASRA) advances the agent-based system development process by providing a set of key interaction patterns for functional areas that exist between the layers and protocols… Show more

The recent growth of agent-based software systems was achieved without the development of a reference architecture. From a software engineering standpoint, a reference architecture is necessary to compare, evaluate, and integrate past, current, and future agent-based software systems. The agent systems reference architecture (ASRA) advances the agent-based system development process by providing a set of key interaction patterns for functional areas that exist between the layers and protocols of agent-based systems. Furthermore, the ASRA identifies the points for interoperability between agent-based systems and increases the level of discussion when referring to agent-based systems. This paper presents methodology, grounded in software forensics, to develop the ASRA and provides an overview of the resulting architectural representation. The methodology uses an approach based on software engineering techniques adapted to study agent frameworks-the libraries and tools for building agent systems. The resulting ASRA can serve as an abstract representation of the components necessary for facilitating comparison, integration, and interoperation of software systems composed of agents. Show less

The Proto spatial computing language in Beal and Bachrach (2006) [1] simplifies the creation of scalable, robust, distributed programs by abstracting a network of locally communicating devices as a continuous geometric manifold. However, Proto’s successful application in a number of domains is challenging its coherence across different platforms and distributions. We thus present a complete operational semantics for the Proto language, as executed asynchronously on a network of fast… Show more

The Proto spatial computing language in Beal and Bachrach (2006) [1] simplifies the creation of scalable, robust, distributed programs by abstracting a network of locally communicating devices as a continuous geometric manifold. However, Proto’s successful application in a number of domains is challenging its coherence across different platforms and distributions. We thus present a complete operational semantics for the Proto language, as executed asynchronously on a network of fast message-passing devices. This semantics covers all of the operations of the three space–time operator families unique to Proto—restriction, feedback, and neighborhood—as well as the current pointwise operations that it shares with most other languages. This formalization will provide a reference to aid implementers in preserving language coherence across platforms, domains, and distributions. Show less

As methods for detecting improvised explosive devices (IEDs) continue to diversify, it becomes increasingly important to establish a framework for coordinating distributed IED monitoring resources to best protect a designated area. The purpose of this paper is to establish the beginnings of such a framework in a distributed plan execution context. The first contribution of this paper is defining an automated planning domain for distributed IED detection. In doing so, we investigate approaches… Show more

As methods for detecting improvised explosive devices (IEDs) continue to diversify, it becomes increasingly important to establish a framework for coordinating distributed IED monitoring resources to best protect a designated area. The purpose of this paper is to establish the beginnings of such a framework in a distributed plan execution context. The first contribution of this paper is defining an automated planning domain for distributed IED detection. In doing so, we investigate approaches for coordinating distributed plan execution resources. Whereas many existing multi–agent system (MAS) frameworks abstract network information from agent decision–making processes, we instead propose that MAS frameworks consider network properties to improve effectiveness. The second contribution of the paper is the description of several types of network–aware planning, execution, and monitoring agents and a comparison of their performance and effectiveness in an IED monitoring scenario. The results of this research indicate that network–awareness improves distributed plan execution (e.g., IED monitoring). Furthermore, we find that an agent's benefit from reasoning about network properties is directly affected by the amount of dynamism in the network. Show less

In this paper we introduce the General Adaptable Metric Execution Tool and Environment (GAMETE) to aid the design, measurement, and analysis of cyber-physical systems (CPSs). GAMETE is a general and extensible environment for evaluating and computing metrics associated with the performance and complexity of CPS designs. GAMETE supports a wide array of metrics that it generates over simulation and experimental output data from CPSs. Key features of GAMETE are its 1) execution environment to host… Show more

In this paper we introduce the General Adaptable Metric Execution Tool and Environment (GAMETE) to aid the design, measurement, and analysis of cyber-physical systems (CPSs). GAMETE is a general and extensible environment for evaluating and computing metrics associated with the performance and complexity of CPS designs. GAMETE supports a wide array of metrics that it generates over simulation and experimental output data from CPSs. Key features of GAMETE are its 1) execution environment to host the simulations of CPS models, 2) unified data representation to host simulation and experimental data from CPSs, 3) dynamic metric library that supports the semi-automated evaluation of a wide range of metrics, and 4) standards-based integration with design toolchains. The contribution of this paper is the presentation of a reference architecture for batch metric computation and a case-study where GAMETE helped to quantitatively evaluate the performance of a CPS. Show less

As the number of computing devices embedded into engineered systems continues to rise, there is a widening gap between the needs of the user to control aggregates of devices and the complex technology of individual devices. Spatial computing attempts to bridge this gap for systems with local communication by exploiting the connection between physical locality and device connectivity. A large number of spatial computing domain specific languages (DSLs) have emerged across diverse domains, from… Show more

As the number of computing devices embedded into engineered systems continues to rise, there is a widening gap between the needs of the user to control aggregates of devices and the complex technology of individual devices. Spatial computing attempts to bridge this gap for systems with local communication by exploiting the connection between physical locality and device connectivity. A large number of spatial computing domain specific languages (DSLs) have emerged across diverse domains, from biology and reconfigurable computing, to sensor networks and agent-based systems. In this chapter, the authors develop a framework for analyzing and comparing spatial computing DSLs, survey the current state of the art, and provide a roadmap for future spatial computing DSL investigation. Show less

Force protection capabilities have emerged as necessary for operations such as Village Stability Operations and Forward Operating Base security. Current Force Protection Kits include a rich set of sensors that can be monitored from a core operator station. This paper describes ongoing research to extend the reach of Force Protection capabilities as part of an integrated, network-centric system to protect mobile troops on patrol, to include sensors beyond the organic Force Protection perimeter… Show more

Force protection capabilities have emerged as necessary for operations such as Village Stability Operations and Forward Operating Base security. Current Force Protection Kits include a rich set of sensors that can be monitored from a core operator station. This paper describes ongoing research to extend the reach of Force Protection capabilities as part of an integrated, network-centric system to protect mobile troops on patrol, to include sensors beyond the organic Force Protection perimeter, and to enable the automated, selective transfer of information to and from kit locations. These extended Force Protection capabilities are enabled by a highly-mobile, vehicle mounted information management system providing beyond line-of-sight publish-subscribe capabilities, sensor data archiving, video storage and retrieval, and data ferrying across long distances. Show less

* Won best demonstration award *
We have used the Proto spatial computing language to create teaming algorithms based on random chain formation. Our algorithms are self-stabilizing, scale easily from single digit robots to
thousands of robots, and are highly robust against dynamic changes in perception and communication, arena size, teaming goals, adding and removing robots, and even dimension. In this paper, we describe our approach, give details on our algorithms and their self-*… Show more

* Won best demonstration award *
We have used the Proto spatial computing language to create teaming algorithms based on random chain formation. Our algorithms are self-stabilizing, scale easily from single digit robots to
thousands of robots, and are highly robust against dynamic changes in perception and communication, arena size, teaming goals, adding and removing robots, and even dimension. In this paper, we describe our approach, give details on our algorithms and their self-* properties, and present simulations validating the algorithms, along with instructions for running simulations yourself.
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Publish-subscribe-based Information Management (IM) services provide a key enabling technology for net-centric operations. This paper describes technology for Quality of Service (QoS) and Internet-Protocol-based Airborne Networking features for IM services. Enhancing IM services with airborne networking features improves effectiveness in combined tactical and enterprise networks with mobile airborne and ground-based embedded platforms interacting with enterprise systems in command and control… Show more

Publish-subscribe-based Information Management (IM) services provide a key enabling technology for net-centric operations. This paper describes technology for Quality of Service (QoS) and Internet-Protocol-based Airborne Networking features for IM services. Enhancing IM services with airborne networking features improves effectiveness in combined tactical and enterprise networks with mobile airborne and ground-based embedded platforms interacting with enterprise systems in command and control operations. Show less

A common problem in spatial computing is how to arrange the structure of a spatial computer into a geometric form adapted for its current environment and needs. In natural biological organisms, the processes of morphogenesis adapt structure to environment remarkably well on both an individual and evolutionary time scale. However, no clear framework has been developed for exploiting morphogenetic principles in the creation of engineered systems. In this paper, we present preliminary work toward… Show more

A common problem in spatial computing is how to arrange the structure of a spatial computer into a geometric form adapted for its current environment and needs. In natural biological organisms, the processes of morphogenesis adapt structure to environment remarkably well on both an individual and evolutionary time scale. However, no clear framework has been developed for exploiting morphogenetic principles in the creation of engineered systems. In this paper, we present preliminary work toward such a framework, developed against the example of a robot similar to the iRobot LANdroid. We first show how developmental programs might act as a reference architecture for engineered designs, facilitating variation. We then present a candidate basis set of geometric operations for encoding adaptable developmental programs, demonstrate how they can be applied to develop a robot body plan, and discuss …
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The slow adoption of agent-oriented methodologies as a paradigm for developing industry systems is due in part to their lack of integration and general-purpose use. There exists a need to define common patterns, relationships between components, and structural qualities that a reference architecture for agent-based systems would solve. However, there is little, if any, consensus on how to create a reference architecture for agent-based systems. This paper presents a methodology for developing a… Show more

The slow adoption of agent-oriented methodologies as a paradigm for developing industry systems is due in part to their lack of integration and general-purpose use. There exists a need to define common patterns, relationships between components, and structural qualities that a reference architecture for agent-based systems would solve. However, there is little, if any, consensus on how to create a reference architecture for agent-based systems. This paper presents a methodology for developing a reference architecture that documents agent-based systems from different system viewpoints. Rather than the traditional approach of studying existing systems, the documentation methodology relies on forensic software analysis of agent frameworks (i.e., APIs and libraries for constructing agent systems). We demonstrate the methodology by describing the process used to create the Agent System Reference … Show less

In today's world, connectivity is increasingly taken for granted. Wireless networks, cell towers, and satellites provide ubiquitous connectivity through a number of devices. However, in austere locations constant connectivity cannot be assumed, e.g., due to the remoteness of the area, due to a disaster or combat situation, or due to insecurity or lack of access to available communications. This paper describes a system, Marti, which the authors have been developing and demonstrating that can… Show more

In today's world, connectivity is increasingly taken for granted. Wireless networks, cell towers, and satellites provide ubiquitous connectivity through a number of devices. However, in austere locations constant connectivity cannot be assumed, e.g., due to the remoteness of the area, due to a disaster or combat situation, or due to insecurity or lack of access to available communications. This paper describes a system, Marti, which the authors have been developing and demonstrating that can provide inter-connectivity and access to information in austere locations. Marti is rapidly deployable and interoperates with a large number of existing devices and client applications. Show less