The Pilot's Associate: Enhancing Situational Awareness Through Cooperating Expert Systems

The Pilot's Associate (PA) is a network of cooperating expert systems designed to enhance pilot situational awareness by assisting the pilot with information management and aircraft control. The Pilot's Associate research effort is funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and managed jointly with the Air Force Wright Aeronautical Laboratories. One objective of the program is to provide an application environment through which basic technologies of the Strategic Computing Program (SCP) such as speech processing, knowledge based systems/tools, and parallel processing can be tested and given direction for further development. It will also serve to identify and demonstrate computing technologies suitable for transition into future weapon systems(1).