Using spoken language to facilitate military transportation planning

Abstract

The DARPA SLS Program is developing a technology that has been justified, at least in part, by its potential relevance to military applications.In an effort to demonstrate the relevance of SIS technology to real-world military applications, BBN has undertaken the task of providing a spoken language interface to DART, a system for military logistical transportation planning.We discuss the transportation planning process, describe the real-world DART system, identify parts of the system where spoken language can facilitate planning, and describe BBN's work towards porting the HARC SIS system to the DART domain. TRANSPORTATION PLANNINGLogistical transportation planning is the process of determining how to get people and cargo from where they are to where they need to be. Inter-theatre movements of personnel and supplies around the world are currently planned for the Army, Navy, Air Force, and other services by USTRANSCOM (the US TRANSportation COMmand) which operates under the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The transportation plarming process is quite complex, involving very large databases of movement requirements, and information about personnel, cargo, transportation assets, and geographic locations. Currently, the human interface to military planning systems is relatively enmbersome and unintelligent, which adds extra complexity to the planner's task.As a domain for the application of spoken language, military transportation planning has a number of advantages:1. Transportation planning is an essential military function and successful application of spoken language would be both useful to TRANSCOM and visible to other potential military users of SLS technology.2. The concept of planning movements of people and supplies can be understood by a wide audience.3. The application is non-trivial and, in the DART context that we will describe, affords opportunities for applying spoken language understanding at many levels of sophistication.4. Current efforts to improve the planning process using nonspeech technology have been weU-received, and cooperative users may be available as close as Scott Air Force Base near St. Louis.5. An unclassified development database is available in Oracle on a Son. THE DART SYSTEMBBN is currently involved in an effort to improve the transportation process using non-speech teclmology. The DART (Dynamic Analysis and Replanning Tool) project 1 , is demonstrating the operational impact of AI planning and scheduling technology on transportation planning at USTRANSCOM. DART addresses an urgent need for fast and accurate plan generation and evaluation to support both longrange, hypothetical planning and planning in such crisis-response operations as those in the Middle East.The current DART system [1] is in use at Scott Air Force Base and other locations around the globe. The workstation environment which has been installed at TRANSCOM to support DART is already being used and has been credited with reducing routine plan analysis from 3 days to I day [2].

BBN HARC and Delphi results on the ATIS benchmarks---February 1991

“…We began to apply HARC to a demonstration task involved with military logistical planning. This system, called DART (Dynamic Analytical Replanning Tool), our initial integration of speech understanding with it, and an outline of our plans to expand that integration are described elsewhere in this volume [6]. …”