Commanders, assisted by core staff, must not only decide what to do and how to do it, they must also recognize if and when decisions must be made, as well as understand the consequences of such decisions. Ward Page, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Information Systems Office (ISO) program manager, is charged with the critical task of creating a vision of the Command Post of the Future (CPoF), which promises to increase the speed and efficiency of decision-making in future military operations.

The goal of the CPoF is to increase the speed and quality of decision-making, while reducing staffing requirements. To achieve this operational goal, the technical objective is to create an adaptive decision-centered information visualization environment to support and enhance situation awareness, collaborative planning, and rapid plan dissemination. Program Manager Lt. Gen. Paul van Riper and Gen. Paul Gorman (USA, Ret.) have guided the CPoF vision from its conception as a mock demonstration in October 1998, through the kick-off of this program in February 1999. To ensure that program objectives are met, this three-year DARPA initiative is pursuing an aggressive experimentation plan. The first limited objective experiment is scheduled for November 1999 and will focus on data presentation and situational awareness.

The CPoF program research thrust is primarily directed toward human-computer interaction and provides funding across three broad technology areas: visualization, multimodal input, and dialogue interaction.

Among the 19 contractors funded this year for Human Computer Interaction (HCI) research are Maya Viz for tailored visualization; Oregon Graduate Institute, with the QuickSet multimodal handheld computer that integrates speech and gesture; Sarnoff for large scalable modular display interfaces; Carnegie Mellon University for sketch understanding and multimedia note-taking; Northwestern University for geographic reasoning; Duke University for dialogue management; and Boeing's Human Computer Interface

Manager (HCIM), which monitors user actions and reasons about intent. MITRE is participating in the CPoF program in two main areas. Dialogue and context management fall under the Information Systems and Technology Division's Lisa Harper, who is acting as technical manager for systems engineering. The area of visualization falls under the Information Technology Division's Nahum Gershon, who is providing advisory assistance to the CPoF program manager.

For more information, please contact Lisa Harper using the employee directory.