Air Force PRECOG effort will leverage Charles River Analytics probabilistic reasoning tools
NewsOctober 26, 2017
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. U.S. Air Force officials selected Charles River Analytics Inc. to build probabilistic reasoning tools for the Probabilistic Reasoning for Enhanced Course of Action Generation system (PRECOG) program. The 27-month contract is valued close to $750,000.
Charles River will use Figaro, an open-source probabilistic programming language for probabilistic modeling, in creating these tools. The company is also partnering on the PRECOG effort with Paul Szymanski of the Space Strategies Center and Professors Rina Dechter and Alexander Ihler of the University of California at Irvine.
The goal of PRECOG is to advance the decision-making algorithms, enabling efficient courses of actions (COAs) selection on board a satellites.
“In PRECOG, we’re developing tools and methods for satellites to autonomously reason about their environment and select COAs for the satellite to implement based on the assessment of the world,” says Dr. Brian Ruttenberg, Principal Investigator on the PRECOG effort and Senior Scientist at Charles River. “This capability will allow satellites to more quickly respond to natural and man-made threats in space and prevent potential damage or destruction of these critical assets.”
Charles River will use Figaro to represent complex COAs and their evolution under uncertainty. Figaro will also help optimize the choice of COAs against multiple objectives.
