SBIR/STTR Award attributes
The safety and operational success of the US Navy’s (USN) fleet depends on the expert navigation, seamanship, and ship handling skills of its Surface Warfare Officers (SWOs). To address these challenges, Charles River Analytics and University of Nevada Reno (UNR) propose to develop and evaluate a full-scope prototype Mentoring and Responsive Learning through Intelligent Nautical Skill-modeling, Prompting, Intervention, and Feedback during Independent Exercises (MARLINSPIKE) system. MARLINSPIKE features (1) a scenario generation and director agent that uses search-based experience management to project potential training outcomes and plan training scenario elements from high-level, quick-to-author specifications; (2) Charles River Analytics’ Hap reactive planning architecture to make realistic and reactive high-level decisions for each ship; (3) UNR’s ship movement controller using rules of the road and potential fields to navigate ships through traffic and around obstacles to meet the high-level decisions; and (4) UNR’s Rules of the Road ship handling simulation to enable ease of integration and rapid iteration on development prototypes, transitioning to Navy MSS and NSST simulations for transition efforts.
