The Warfighter Associate: Objective and Automated Metrics for Mission Command

Abstract

It has been assumed that within Mission Command and Network Enabled Operations information superiority results in greater information sharing, situational awareness, collaborative decision-making, and agility; all of which ultimately contribute to greater mission effectiveness. However, demonstrating the truth of these assumptions requires objectively measuring individual and collaborative Soldier performance and information sharing in networked environments, which is an enduring challenge. The Warfighter Associate (WA) is an Intelligent Agent software system that uses doctrinally-based knowledge engineering to offer decision-support for Soldier cognitive workflows. The underlying knowledge representation can serve as state traces, measuring aspects of Soldier cognitive performance across scenario runtime as dynamic events unfold on the battlefield. This approach can unobtrusively and automatically capture aspects of Mission Command performance over time. Specifically, the WA currently captures the following performance metrics: (1) Objective cognitive workload over time; (2) Responsiveness to events in dynamic environments; (3) Course of action; and (4) Staff collaborations and manifest agility Our approach captures Soldier s goals and the plans to achieve those goals in real-time as the work dynamically unfolds as a complex network of cognitive tasks. The capability of an analyst to record, view, and analyze work activity dynamically and unobtrusively over specified epochs of time is, to our knowledge, unprecedented.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Jun 01, 2013
Accession Number
ADA575837

Entities

People

  • Jonathan Z. Bakdash
  • Laura Marusich
  • Norbou Buchler
  • Robert Hamm
  • Stacey Sokoloff

Organizations

  • United States Army Research Laboratory

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • C4I
  • Engineered Resilient Systems
  • Human Systems

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Cognitive Workload
  • Command And Control
  • Data Analysis
  • Human Factors Engineering
  • Improvised Explosive Devices
  • Information Exchange
  • Information Systems
  • Medical Evacuation
  • Military Operations
  • Operations Research
  • Psychology
  • Resource Management
  • Situational Awareness
  • Software Agents
  • Task Performance And Analysis
  • Test And Evaluation
  • Warfare

Fields of Study

  • Computer science

Readers

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  • Distributed Systems and Data Platform Development