A researcher at UD has received special recognition for his work on complex computer organizations, particularly ways to get large numbers of machines to work together to solve problems.

Keith Decker, associate professor of computer and information sciences, was honored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s Information Processing Technology Office for “foundational research in generalized coordination technologies.”

The agency says Decker’s “superior research efforts and vision fostered the development of a new paradigm which enables loosely coupled distributed autonomous systems to work effectively together,” adding that the development is of great importance to the Department of Defense.

Decker says the research is designed to help in coordination and decision-making by military units in the field, with a parallel use for civilian emergency responders.

“There is an old saying in the military that no plan survives contact with the enemy,” Decker says. “The question becomes: How do you recalibrate and then coordinate your response?”

He says coordination is difficult because it requires solid communication up and down the chain of command, a process that can be tedious and, in the heat of battle, prone to error.

“We are working to develop computer systems that can keep track of the plan and that keep track of alternatives to the plan for when things go wrong,” Decker says.

Furthermore, the exceptionally dynamic and complex system is designed to help commanders understand how various setbacks affect individual units and provide options to recover from those setbacks. The system features automated decision-making that would be of great value if a unit is under fire, and it also provides a series of backup plans for the changing conditions in the field.

The defense research agency will test the system over the next three years, after which it could be contracted out to manufacturers for further refinement and implementation.

“Problems are hard to solve in the real world because in the real world, no one has a centralized picture of what is happening because tasks are distributed,” Decker says. He tries to look at the many variables through a computer representation that can model the diverse tasks being undertaken, how those tasks interact and the effects of those interactions.

The benefits of such a system are quite clear for the military, which fields an array of units over an ever-changing field, but Decker also cites civilian applications, such as the response to the destruction caused by Hurricane Katrina in 2005.