Total Infrastructure and Mission Planning Suite (TIMPS)
Navy SBIR FY2018.1


Sol No.: Navy SBIR FY2018.1
Topic No.: N181-061
Topic Title: Total Infrastructure and Mission Planning Suite (TIMPS)
Proposal No.: N181-061-0391
Firm: Scientific Systems Company, Inc
500 West Cummings Park
Suite 3000
Woburn, Massachusetts 1801
Contact: Kai-yuh Hsiao
Phone: (781) 933-5355
Web Site: http://www.ssci.com
Abstract: While approaches exist to plan and operate autonomous unmanned systems (AUS) in isolated contexts, the inclusion and optimization of AUS in theater-level total force planning is unresolved. We propose TIMPS, a toolset of mission planning algorithms and HMI to enable theater-level planning and drive down manned support requirements for USW and other missions. TIMPS�?T design is based on three key insights: 1. Kill chain and similar missions require continuity, which depends on access to infrastructure services (e.g. power/fuel, resupply, comms, C2/exfil, PNT, autonomy, battle management); 2. Optimization of mission assets, especially AUS, requires an understanding of the asset-specific planners and behaviors; and 3. The ability of human operators to specify and manage these complex missions requires specialized HMI tools and representations. TIMPS is thus focused on 1. Optimizing the placement of infrastructure and mission assets to ensure continuous mission execution, 2. Learning the behaviors and interfacing to asset-specific planners, and 3. Providing user-understandable HMI tools and representations. TIMPS will be adapted and integrated from SSCI technologies developed under DARPA programs, including CNAV, DASH, ACTUV, and CDMaST, along with multi-vehicle tasking algorithms from MIT�?Ts Aerospace Controls Laboratory, represented by Professor Jonathan How as a consultant on this proposed effort.
Benefits: Theater-level total force planning of manned-unmanned teams would be a game-changer in the USW domain, allowing users to manage and resupply large numbers of unmanned assets while maintaining optimal mission effectiveness across all those assets. This would be a significant step beyond the small-scale, isolated use of autonomous assets today, which almost always requires the attention of a dedicated manned asset. In the commercial domain, large-scale mission-aware planning could be used to manage heterogeneous fleets of robots or vehicles trying to accomplish complex collaborative tasks, such as logistics, warehouse operations, resource exploration, and search and recovery.

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