[Peace-discuss] Andreas Cangellaris is a disgusting human being

[David Green]

You can get up a demonstration against a crackpot libertarian, but probably not against this.--DG

UI leading $25 million effort to build 'smart' link for military
      Fri, 10/06/2017 - 7:00am | Julie Wurth           
First came the internet.

Then the "internet of things," connecting devices from coffee makers to washing machines with the internet and each other.

Now the University of Illinois is leading a five-year, $25 million initiative to develop an "internet of battlefield things."

The idea is to have humans and technology work together in a seamless network, giving soldiers a competitive edge, and keeping troops and civilians out of harm's way, officials said.

The UI will lead the effort to develop the scientific foundations for battlefield analytics and services, officials said.

The Alliance for IoBT Research on Evolving Intelligent Goal-driven Networks, funded by the Army Research Lab, includes collaborators from that lab, Carnegie Mellon University, the University of California at Berkeley, University of California at Los Angeles, University of Massachusetts, University of Southern California and SRI International, a research institute created by Stanford University. The funding covers the first five years of a potential 10-year effort.

Experts said military operations of the future will rely less on human soldiers and more on interconnected technology. Advances in unmanned systems and machine intelligence can be used to improve military capabilities, they said.

The internet of battlefield things will connect soldiers with smart technology in armor, radios, weapons and other objects to give troops a better understanding of battlefield situations and help them assess risks, officials said.

UI computer science Professor Tarek Abdelzaher, who will lead the alliance, said the collaboration between Army researchers and those in academia and industry will change the fundamental understanding of what's possible with "smart battlefield services" — networks of sensors, computers, data and analytics.
Similar technology has already brought us smart homes and wearable devices, said Abdelzaher, who researches computing systems that interact with the physical world and has done commercial work on the internet of things. But that technology isn't directly applicable to the battlefield, where conditions are adversarial, he said.
"Nobody is shooting at Amazon Echo," he said.

Military situations require capabilities such as autonomy and resilience. If a group of devices or sensors are separated from their home base, they still have to be able to complete their mission, he said.

The devices could be in everything from soldiers' helmets to their armor to the guns they use — "everything you can imagine," he said.

"Everything on the battlefield is going to have a little bit of a brain and communications capability and collaborate with other entities," he said.

Soldiers in battle are constantly making quick decisions in the face of adverse conditions that can change in an instant, so they need a continual flow of information to make the best decisions possible, he said.

"You need to connect to the right sensors, the right cameras, the right devices to collect the right pieces of information," Abdelzaher said.

Researchers hope to create a network of intelligent devices that adapt as a mission evolves, analyzing their available resources and reassembling to meet new requirements.
On a rescue mission, the goal might be to find the survivors and bring them to a safe place. A drone or airborne robot could be sent out to try to find them and figure out how to extricate them safely, Abdelzaher said.
The systems have to be self-aware and able to reason about goals, vulnerabilities and other characteristics to meet a commander's intent. They have to be able to counteract attacks in near real-time and provide stability under uncertain conditions. They must be able to fuse data from technology and from humans, learn from previous actions and anticipate future moves, to provide the most relevant information at any given time, experts said. And they have to understand what they can and can't do without human permission, Abdelzaher said.

The ethical implications of autonomous machines on the battlefield are enormous, and one challenge for scientists is to ensure that the machines "know the bounds of autonomy," he said.

"One of the things that is not on the menu is to build machines that can inflict harm or kill without humans explicitly pushing the button to do so. That is not part of the picture," Abdelzaher said.

The technology could have commercial or civilian applications — improving the response after a hurricane or other disasters, for example.

"Illinois is proud to lead this effort, which will not only advance military science, but also could lead to breakthroughs that impact many other fields," said Andreas Cangellaris, dean of the UI College of Engineering. "The excellence brought forth by this team could transform 21st century technology."

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