An agent-based software architecture to aid human operators during UAS target engagement

Results of simulation experiments with UAS crews have indicated that the crew had difficulties following rules of engagement and the law of armed conflict when engaging a target with a weapon. Defence Research & Development Canada is developing an intelligent adaptive interface, called the Authority Pathway for Weapon Engagement (APWE), which is a decision aid to support UAS crews in following target engagement procedures. This paper identifies the high level requirements and describes the software architecture that meets these requirements. Intelligent software agents are used to adapt APWE interfaces to the needs of the UAS crew in real-time. Software agent requirements are identified in terms of agent framework, agent behavior, and information exchange requirements. A novel client-server architecture with a unified model language state machine using belief-desire-intention agents is proposed using zero-cost open source software.