I-P² - Intelligent Process Panels to Support Coalition Operations

I-X is a research programme with a number of different aspects intended to create a well-founded approach to allow humans and computer systems to cooperate in the creation or modification of some product or products such as documents, plans or designs. I-X may also be used to support more general collaborative activity. The I-X research draws on earlier work on O-Plan (Tate et.al., 1998; Tate et.al., 2000; Tate et.al., 2002), (Tate, 1996), the Enterprise Project (Fraser and Tate, 1995; Stader, 1996); Uschold, et.al., 1998) and the TBPM project (Stader, 2000) but seeks to make the framework generic and to clarify terminology, simplify the approach taken, and increase re-usability and applicability of the core ideas. I-X Applications are being studied in a variety of areas. These currently include: • Coalition Operations (CoAX: I-LEED, I-DEEL) • Emergency and Unusual Procedure Assistance (I-Rescue) • Help Desk Support (I-Help) • Multi-Perspective Knowledge Modelling and Management (I-AKT) • Contextualised Presentations of Procedures and Plans (I-Tell) • Collaborative Meeting and Task Support (I-Room, I-Space) An application of I-X Process Panels within a military Coalition context part of the Coalition Agents eXperiment CoAX (Allsopp et.al., 2001; Allsopp et.al., 2002) will be described in this paper. 1 I-X Research Programme I-X is a research programme with a number of different aspects intended to create a well-founded approach to allow humans and computer systems to cooperate in the creation or modification of some product such as a plan, design or physical entity – i.e. it supports synthesis tasks . I-X may also be used to support more general collaborative activity. The I-X research draws on earlier work on O-Plan (Tate et.al., 1998; 2000; 2002). (Tate, 1996) and the Enterprise Project (Fraser and Tate, 1995; Uschold, et.al., 1998) but seeks to make the framework generic and to clarify terminology, simplify the approach taken, and increase re-usability and applicability of the core ideas. The I-X research programme includes the following threads or work areas: 1. I-Core, which is the core architecture, the underlying ontology of activity and processes termed , and the terminology used to describe applications, systems or agents built in the I-X framework. 2. I-PE, which is the I-X Process Editor, which is itself an I-X application but is also used to create and maintain the process models and activity specifications used elsewhere. 3. I-P, which are I-X Process Panels used to support user tasks and cooperation. 4. I-Plan, which is the I-X Planning System. This is also used within I-P and other applications as it provides generic facilities for supporting planning, process refinement, dynamic response to changing needs, etc. 5. I-Views , which are viewers for processes and products, and which are employed in other applications of IX. I-Views can be for a wide range of modalities and types of user. 6. I-Faces, which are underlying support utilities to allow for the creation of user interfaces (User I-Faces), inter-agent communications (Communications I-Faces) and repository access (Repository I-Faces). 7. I-X Applications of the above work areas in a variety of areas. These currently include: a. Coalition Operations (CoAX: I-LEED, I-DEEL) b. Emergency and Unusual Procedure Assistance (I-Rescue) c. Help Desk Support (I-Help) d. Multi-Perspective Knowledge Modelling and Management (I-AKT) e. Medical Best Practice Procedures or Protocols (I-Medic) f. Natural Language Presentations of Procedures and Plans (I-Tell) g. Collaborative meeting and task support (I-Me, I-Room and I-Space) 8. I-X Student Projects , which are deepening and refining a number of aspects of the I-X research programme. 9. I-X Technology Transfer, including work on standards committees, especially for process, plan, activity and capability models.