Collaborative agents for C2 of tactical urban combat operations
Gabriel Jakobson, John Buford, Lundy M. Lewis · Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE · 2008
Forces engaged in tactical urban combat operations require a continuous and comprehensive picture of the combat environment to quickly detect the target and effectively reduce opposition. This requires a significant coordination of actions, situational awareness, and fast decision-making. This paper focuses on modeling the collaboration acts among multiple combat units. We analyze the tactics of urban combat operations and then propose a general framework for modeling collaboration among units. Our approach uses Multi-Agent Systems (MAS) as a paradigm for modeling Command and Control (C2) in urban combat operations. We introduce the notion of scenario-based and policy-based MAS collaboration, and analyze different MAS inter-agent structural and control architectures, including hierarchical and federated architectures. This paper shows how scenario-based and policy-based collaboration matched with different MAS control architectures fits the C2 requirements of urban combat operations.