C2 design considerations for federated AI/ML systems

Abstract

Building on growth in the commercial IoT space, the Internet of Battlefield Things (IoBT) paradigm envisions mixed application of commercial and military IoT technologies to support Multi-Domain Operations via next-generation Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (AI/ML) applications. Operational environments for IoBT are expected to feature significant data volume and variety to support mission needs at varying echelons, while simultaneously requiring coordinated asset management and AI/ML usage across distributed coalitions. These conditions motivate the design and implementation of next-generation infrastructures intended to facilitate: (1) Data exchange between systems according to broader mission needs; (2) Coordinated AI/ML processing across systems; (3) Intelligent prioritization of cross-infrastructure processing and dissemination. Towards achieving these aims, this work looks into the design and prototyping of an AI/ML pipeline, aimed at: (1) Ingest and processing of video feeds; (2) Prioritization of video feed object detections based on Value of Information (VoI) assessment; (3) Support for information exchange with external systems. This submission will cover implementation details of the AI/ML pipeline, a reference usage scenario for IoT data processing and information exchange, and planned future work.