Version 1.1 is Released!

Overview:

The Cougaar MicroEdition project has developed a JAVA based distributed agent software suite derived from the Cougaar architecture that executes on very small wireless computing devices integrated with sensor and robotic packages for sensor-web and cooperative robotic applications. This project provides the necessary programming environment and distributed application tools to facilitate the development of sophisticated, self-organizing networks of wireless connected agent systems for military and space applications. The project culminated in the demonstration of the utility of such systems by connecting a simple robotic sensor-web with a fully enabled Cougaar society, providing distributed data and information management down to the simple sensor packages.

The project is focused on the extension to the Cougaar infrastructure to support operation on resource-limited embedded devices. These sensing and acting agents operate as a wireless web to perform data fusion operations that are not possible with single-sensor systems. They are interoperable with Cougaar agents, which can perform higher-level aggregation, additional data fusion and problem solving using the Cougaar cognitive model.

Objective:
Extend the Cougaar distributed agent technology to support embedded devices in a way that is: 
  • Randomly-distributed: Embedded agents need spatial awareness. Many must sense their position, surroundings
  • Approach:
    • Miniaturize the Cougaar core, make it less than 1 MB memory for VM and require less than 100 MHz processor 
    • Develop sensor interfaces and algorithms 
    • Develop actuator interfaces and algorithms 
    • Develop platform coordination software 
    Architecture Concept:

    The concept is that one CougaarSE (Standard Edition) would manage several CougaarME modules.  These modules provide access to sensors and actuators in the real world, effectively serving as the eyes and hands for the agent in the real world.  In general, the linkage looks as follows:

    When you extend this concept to a robotics platform - the most obvious place to explore this kind of real world interface capability, we would have a physical architecture looking something like the following:

    See some pictures of the robots in action here