Type of Research: Military; Private corporation, Frontier Technology, Inc. (FTI), funded by U. S. Defense Modeling and Simulation Office (DMSO).

Summary:
This paper describes FTI’s efforts to create a Human Behavior Representation (HBR) as part of a DMSO Challenge Problem to simulate a human submarine commander’s decision making processes during a “Sea Scenario” test. “The object of the “game” was to command a submarine to protect a “high-value asset” (HVAan aircraft carrier) and two picket ships from submarine attacks while not accidentally attacking a non-aggressive submarine.”

The only commands that the HBR could give were:

1. Station on Port - positions the submarine in a location to monitor the enemy port
2. Transit- moves the submarine to the specified location at the specified speed
3. Station on Unit- positions the submarine in a location to monitor either the HVA or one of the picket ships
4. Station in Area- positions the submarine at a specified location
5. Trail- follow a specified enemy sub
6. Disengage Trail- stop following an enemy sub
7. Fire- launch a torpedo against an enemy sub
8. Report- send an information report to HQ
9. Cease Reporting- stop sending an information report
10. Set Speed- set the speed of motion

Furthermore, the HBR did not concern itself with the intricacies of submarine command such as changes in depth or changing course to properly align the boat for a torpedo attack.

Yu’s group decided to implement a “belief-based” Bayesian network for the HBR. It was driven by the following beliefs:

- Belief that Red will attack the HVA (or Picket ship)
- Belief that our submarine is capable of successful attack on Red
- Belief in the location of Red
- Belief that Red is trying to attack our submarine
- Belief that we need to monitor the port area
- Belief that we should make a report
- Belief in our best course of action (based on all of the above)

They then purchased Netica, a Commercial-Off-The-Shelf (COTS) software package that implemented Bayesian Networks (see their web site at http://www.norsys.com/). The Bayesian Network evaluated a number of “Conditional Probabilities” They also created four different files that represented personalities of commanders (aggressive, conservative, skeptical and trusting) that could be loaded at runtime.

The paper concludes that, “The behaviors witnessed by the test monitors were deemed appropriate…”

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