Agent-based Complex Systems
Today’s warfighter is faced with an increasingly complex environment that is diverse, distributed, decentralized, and dynamic. These characteristics require highly agile and adaptive C4ISR and weapon systems to enable the warfighter to engage the enemy before they can react. Through the use of innovative agent-based technology, NewVectors provides solutions for managing these complex environments, from anticipating and outmaneuvering global adversaries to identifying novel intelligence in massive, distributed data. NewVectors is an acknowledged global leader in development and application of agent-based complex adaptive systems research to create innovative solutions to our customers’ challenges in highly dynamic environments. For over 20 years, NewVectors and its predecessors have provided the U.S. Department of Defense and intelligence agencies with pioneering solutions based on leading edge research that enables a netcentric environment and equips modern warfighters with the tools they need to meet the latest asymmetric threats.
What is an Agent-Based System?
An agent-based system is composed of simple, autonomous software objects (the “agents”) that collaborate to perform some useful function—similar to the way each ant contributes to the process of building and maintaining a large colony. Through self-organization, useful patterns of behavior emerge from the dynamics of repeated interactions among a population of agents. Just as an insect colony is highly adaptive and robust within a very dynamic environment, our agent-based systems can learn and adapt to a wide range of unforeseen challenges that would immobilize a traditional system. NewVectors has been a leader in understanding how to harness the emergent properties of these agent-based systems and engineering them to solve complex problems effectively in a wide variety of domains.The NewVectors Approach
NewVectors offers a variety of technologies and services that can help your enterprise address complex problems. Some example applications in which NewVectors research has made an impact include:Urban combat tools — NewVectors’ adversarial reasoning technology is capable of anticipating the actions of an adaptive, insurgent adversary in a military urban operation. Using software that evolves with the enemy, NewVectors can provide the commander with predictive, anticipative analyses of future enemy actions while making suggestions for friendly actions. NewVectors also is applying these novel scientific concepts to predict how and where Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) will be deployed.
Information analytics — Today’s analysts are faced with a deluge of information from a wide variety of intelligence sources that completely overwhelms their ability to process and identify critical patterns. NewVectors is breaking new ground by applying research in swarm intelligence, which mimics the behavior of ants and other social insects, to analyze globally distributed data sources and find evidence that corroborates analyst hypotheses.
Unmanned vehicle control — Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) has demonstrated the importance of unmanned vehicles to current and future military and homeland defense operations. Unmanned assets are proving invaluable in providing a persistent and ubiquitous view of the battlespace. NewVectors is using its distributed control algorithms to allow a single operator to coordinate and control multiple ground, air, and sea robotic vehicles. The effectiveness of these swarming algorithms has been demonstrated on a mixed set of air and ground unmanned vehicles in a realistic, multi-phase urban combat scenario.