Rotorcraft Pilot’s Associate Hierarchical Planning

The Army’s Rotorcraft Pilot’s Associate (RPA) program is a multi-year Advanced Technology Demonstration (ATD) program to demonstrate knowledge based cognitive decision aiding technology for existing and new helicopters. Our tightly integrated team shares responsibility for the hierarchically-structured planning elements of our Cognitive Decision Aiding Subsystem (CDAS). The Boeing Company, Mesa, Arizona is responsible for the attack and survivability planning elements. Lockheed-Martin Federal Systems is responsible for the reconnaissance, sensor utilization, communication, and route planning elements. The planning system actively assists the crew in performing the mission and responding to unplanned events. In our hierarchical planning the recon/attack planners first identify high level constructs such as engagement areas and battle positions; the route planner next adds a detailed route between waypoints considering threat exposure, mission timing and fuel constraints; and the survivability, sensor, and communications planners add the final level of details. The lower level planners interact with the higher level planners using planning constraints (or bias terms) and by triggering a replan of higher level planning. Pilot review and modification mechanisms occur for all planning levels. This paper provides a general overview of the RPA system and program, describes our approach to hierarchical planning, and concludes with a synopsis of our progress. Status is portrayed as a function of eight software build cycles (Builds A,B, 1,2,3,4,5,6). Build 6 was evaluated in a full mission simulator in August of 1998 and will undergo final simulation evaluation in April 1999. Flight testing on an Apache Longbow is ongoing and will be completed by June of 1999.