PUMA: Plan Understanding and Mission Assessment

The Plan Understanding and Mission Analysis (PUMA) tool, supports operators who must understand, assess, and compare plans generated by intelligent autonomy software.

SIFT, LLC and the University of Virginia (UVA) have combined their Playbook autonomy control and Tactical Interface for Monitoring and Retargeting (TIMR) decision support tools into the Plan Understanding and Mission Analysis (PUMA) tool, which supports operators who must understand, assess, and compare plans generated by intelligent autonomy software. PUMA was developed under an STTR award for Solicitation topic #N05-T017.The PUMA tool supports operators both when planning operations in advance of missions, monitoring missions in process, and replanning in-process missions to adapt to changing events. In the core of our Phase I effort, we have developed a novel decision grid user interface component that presents multiple plan alternatives together on one screen, allowing operators to see at a glance how the plans differ on resource assignments, objectives satisfied, etc. Researchers from SIFT and UVA have demonstrated the decision grid component in a complex test scenario, developed with guidance from Navy personnel. They have built a proof-of-concept prototype showing how the PUMA concept will integrate advanced autonomy planning capabilities, unmanned vehicle (UV) monitoring, situation awareness displays, etc.