CoAX Stand-alone Contributions DARPA Briefing - November 2000 Dartmouth College, UMichigan, MIT Sloan, Coalition Agents eXperiment (CoAX) DARPA

CoAX /Tech Briefing - 2 Stand-alone Contributions u Dartmouth Field Observation Agent u MIT Robustness Service u Michigan Coordination Planning Aid

CoAX /Tech Briefing - 3 ActComm Project Dartmouth, Harvard, RPI, Illinois, ALPHATECH, Lockheed Martin Department of Defense Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative Developing a system to provide network access to soldiers in the field CoAX Goal Demonstrate the ease with which the large ActComm “legacy” system can be integrated with the rest of CoAX via the DARPA CoABS Grid Field Observations (Dartmouth)

CoAX /Tech Briefing - 4 Field Observations (Dartmouth) Team of soldiers PDA’s Ad-hoc wireless networking Soldiers make observations. Ground and air traffic Personnel and equipment Buildings and other structures Observations fed into battle-planning systems (e.g., MBP) through the CoABS Grid. In the demo, a team of CoAX soldiers will make observations to correct Gao misinformation.

CoAX /Tech Briefing - 5 Observations Observation Agent D’Agents API Grid API I see a tank! Observation Viewer MBP (9-month demo - standalone) (18-month demo - integrated) Query/ Response Registration/ Update Stream Field Observations (Dartmouth)

CoAX /Tech Briefing - 6 Field Observations (Dartmouth) 29-SEP :47.56 OBSERVATION 0018 VEHICLE Observer : N, E, Elevation 530 m Sightline: 270 deg, 0 deg down, 2000 m Vehicle : Gao, flatbed truck, 3 axles, heading: 180, speed: 60 km/h Note : 12 soldiers in flatbed

CoAX /Tech Briefing - 7 The Challenge: Robust Agent Coalitions u Coalitions are open systems u Dynamic membership, often novel partners u Agents in open systems will be unreliable u Intermittent bugs (3 per 1000 lines in the best crafted code) as well as the possibility of malice u Infrastructures can be unreliable u Current failure tolerance approaches are insufficient u Assume closed systems (e.g. mirroring) u Full rollbacks are unnecessarily inefficient for agents

CoAX /Tech Briefing - 8 The MIT Robustness Service u Monitors agent ‘health’ via polling u Responds to agent failure via intelligent task cancellation & task re-announcement u Maintains reliability information (for failure avoidance) u Designed for open systems - makes minimal assumptions about agents

CoAX /Tech Briefing - 9 A Working Grid Service Message Log Robustness Service EH API u Transparently infers commitment structures u Assumes (some) agents support (some of ) EH API u Polling (backup: existing Grid is-alive? method) u Task re-announce u Cancel-task

CoAX /Tech Briefing - 10

CoAX /Tech Briefing - 11 Benefits Validated Empirically u Up to 3x speedup and 8x reduced variability vs. standard timeout-retry approach u Benefits increase with task complexity (decomposition tree height) and with level of EH API support u 05.ps

CoAX /Tech Briefing - 12 Michigan Multilevel Coordinator Agent u Analyses the alternative plan spaces of coalition functional teams that plan independently and act asynchronously u Works top-down with plans chosen by teams to predict unintended interactions (resource contentions; friendly fire). u Identifies candidate resolutions (timing or action constraints). u Notifies process panel of possible plan conflicts and computed workarounds. u Operationalizes/enforces coordination decisions selected. u Given more time, isolates and resolves conflicts more precisely and efficiently. u Allows planning and coordination decisions to be postponed until runtime conditions become better known. u Packaged as a Grid-aware component that will be proactively executing and will be utilized by the AIAI Process Panel.

CoAX /Tech Briefing - 13 Potential plan conflicts include friendly fire in TEZ on ArmyDiv2, destruction of roads through E that ArmyDiv2 might need, and contention for sea and rail transport among army divisions and logistics. Michigan Coalition Coordination Example Forces begin at aircraft carrier AC Airforce sorties to C, E, & Q for Total Exclusion Zone (TEZ) Logistics delivers humanitarian aid to refugees at F and R ArmyDiv1 occupies X to prevent Agadez forces from reaching and inciting refugees at R ArmyDiv2 crosses TEZ to occupy Y to monitor for Gao crossings

CoAX /Tech Briefing - 14 Coordinated Plans Hierarchical plan coordination incrementally recommends coordinated plans that are increasingly detailed and parallelized Fly sorties Move to X Time = cpu sec. Time = cpu sec. Time = cpu sec. Move to Y Logistics Airforce Army Div 1 Army Div 2 Move C1  R Fly sorties AC  P Move to Y Logistics Airforce Army Div 1 Army Div 2 PP PP P  ZZ  X Move C1  R, C2  F Fly sorties AC  P Move to Y Logistics Airforce Army Div 1 Army Div 2 PP PP P  ZZ  X Move C2  F PP PPMove C1  R, C2  F

CoAX /Tech Briefing - 15 Michigan Multilevel Coordinator Agent