Intelligent Agents for Decluttering Command-and-Control Displays

We propose an intelligent agent-based system for the automatic decluttering of a representative net-centric interface designed for controlling multiple unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) by a single operator. Our concept is called ARID, for agent-based reduction of information density. Intelligent agents can reduce the cognitive load imposed upon an operator by de-emphasizing those aspects of a display that can be inferred as less-important to the mission goals. Similarly, an intelligent agent can draw the operator´s attention to high-priority events or situations. ARID agents are based upon knowledge-based reasoning using subjective logic combination rules to deal with uncertainty and subjectivity. This paper presents an overview of our prototype implementation and the results of an initial experiment designed to measure the benefit of the system