Intent-centric paradigm

The Intent-centric Paradigm (ICP) is a research agenda within the field of cognitive science pursued by the Center for Advanced Defense Studies under the direction of Dr. Newton Howard. ICP describes processes which describe how a rational agent understands and interprets the actions of other agents in a particular context at a particular time. Furthermore, it defines a number of principles, such as the bounded physical non-determinism principle, which states that a finite set of actions uniquely determines every possible situation. Studies in the theory of intention awareness are an integral part of the ICP.

ICP meta-model

Within the ICP, a meta-model has been developed which explains the relationship between actions and intentions.

tages of Intention Processing

According to this meta-model, an agent processes intentions in five stages:

* "Observing stage", in which the agent records its own actions as well as those of the other agents in the environment.

* "Formulating stage", in which the agent derives intentions from the actions recorded during the observing stage.

* "Predicting stage", in which the agent predicts future intentions and actions.

* "Orienting stage", in which the agent refines the future actions and current and future intents postulated during the formulating and predicting stage and extracts possible consequences of actions.

* "Deciding stage", in which the agent finalizes its inferences about intentions and actions and decides which of its own intentions to pursue.

Mathematical Foundations

The entities and processes which are described in the ICP meta-model are defined formally using set theoretic notation. Each of the five phases in the meta-model has been described using this notation.

* Actions, actors, and intentions are defined as variables which are organized into sets according to time and context.

* The relationship between actions and intentions is expressed as a mathematical relation.

* A situation is defined as a set of objects, each of which is associated with a set of properties. The objects and their associated properties can therefore be organized into a matrix.

* The effect of an action on a situation is described as a transformation of a situation matrix.

Project types within the ICP

The ICP can be applied to a number of more specific project types, including:

* Improving requirements in engineering theory and practice in Command, Control, Communication, Intelligence (C3I) Systems to include theory of Intention Awareness as an augmentation to Situation Awareness
* Designing cognitive models that encode cognitive attributes such as intention and sense-making in agent-based simulations
* Designing architectures for intrusion detection, informational exchange, interoperability, and security that encode and extract users' intent (friendly and enemy) to improve system performance metrics
* Exploring intent-centric techniques for automatic software generation