As sensors become more active and produce increasing amounts of data, real-time processing and exploitation of this data on the sensor platforms themselves becomes more important. Such on-board processing supports autonomy, helps reduce bandwidth requirements, and provides a means for in-theater processing, coordination and exploitation. The research goal is to develop an Adaptive On-Board Data Processing (AODP) system for planning and executing processing operations in a secure, distributed real-time environment. Research will focus on the development of autonomous internetworking capabilities to support situational awareness of processes, as well as the development of user-friendly, robust processing and exploitation tools. Such work will lead directly to an agent based approach for on-board tasking, analysis, exploitation, dissemination and communications interoperability among sensors, an approach that is in keeping with true self awareness, self organization and autonomous behavior. The proposed research is expected result in significant advancements in the design and application of flexible but robust sensor networks. Key work will be in the representation of the processes running within this network and how human users can define and interact with them.
