SBIR-STTR Award

The process of implementing and evaluating new and sometimes disruptive technologies on U.S. Navy ships and other maritime vessels is lengthy and intense. Micro-level changes in technology can cause macro-level changes to emerge that ripple through the ship infrastructure and radically impact business processes and ultimately the sailor. The sustainability and survivability of ships is determined by the degree to which information and other technologies permit crew to execute business processes and operate ship's infrastructure. We propose a multi-agent modeling and simulation platform to help predict the impact of technology insertions in the Navy ships. Our approach to achieving this objective is to develop and exercise human (crew), process (workflow) and infrastructure models using intelligent agents, which are programmed with the behaviors and rules required for interacting in a ship SoS

The SBIR project Phase II synthetic environment to be created by Simulex, Inc. will encompass many useful scenarios, options, and capabilities. By implementing an agent-based crew model incorporating different scenarios within a single low-risk and -cost environment, the user can examine the effects of Navy business processes upon ship operating costs and readiness. The SBIR project will be the perfect tool to study the costs and performances of various crew attributes and configuration aboard a U.S. Navy warship. The results of technology insertion on crew structure and training will be readily determinable and the effects of the different scenarios on the entire ship’s crew will able to be studied via measurements of stress levels, workloads, and ship readiness.

Benefit:
The tool will potentially be of use for the study of manning requirement in any organizational structure, most notably the Navy and other government/military organizations. The tool could also be used in the private sector to study manning and technology insertion abord private vessels.

Keywords:
synthetic environment, Model, Intelligent Agents, manning, Simulation, Technology Insertion