Battlefield IoT

In the future, military operations will rely less on human soldiers and more on interconnected technology, leveraging advances in embedded systems and machine intelligence in order to achieve superior defense capabilities. The Internet of Battlefield Things will connect soldiers with smart technology in armor, radios, weapons, and other objects, to give troops "extra sensory" perception, offer situational understanding, endow fighters with prediction powers, provide better risk assessment, and develop shared intuitions. This project is a $25M collaboration between the Army Research Lab, academia, and industry, led by UIUC (PI: Tarek Abdelzaher).

Acknowledgement: Funded by CCDC ARL

Video:

The video interviews IoBT leadership and presents a perspective on how research developed in this project can empower future military applications.

Interview with the PI:

This interview discusses the motivating technology trends and application goals of IoBT, as well as the research directions pursued in the project.

From Stacey Higginbotham's IoT Podcast:

An interview with the PI covering perspectives on computer automation for defense applications, spanning a broad swathe of efforts related to IoBT. For the complete podcast with Stacey, click here.

References

  • Will Distributed Computing Revolutionize Peace? The Emergence of Battlefield IoT
    Tarek Abdelzaher, Nora Ayanian, Tamer Basar, Suhas Diggavi, Jana Diesner, Deepak Ganesan, Ramesh Govindan, Susmit Jha, Tancrede Lepoint, Ben Marlin, Klara Nahrstedt, David Nicol, Raj Rajkumar, Stephen Russell, Sanjit Seshia, Fei Sha, Prashant Shenoy, Mani Srivastava, Gaurav Saukhatme, Ananthram Swami, Paulo Tabuada, Don Towsley, Nitin Vaidya and Venu Veeravalli
    In Proc. IEEE International Conference on Distibuted Computing Systems (ICDCS), Vienna, Austria, July 2018.
  • Towards an Internet of Battlefield Things: A Resilience Perspective
    Tarek Abdelzaher, Nora Ayanian, Tamer Basar, Suhas Diggavi, Jana Diesner, Deepak Ganesan, Ramesh Govindan, Susmit Jha, Tancrede Lepoint, Ben Marlin, Klara Nahrstedt, David Nicol, Raj Rajkumar, Stephen Russell, Sanjit Seshia, Fei Sha, Prashant Shenoy, Mani Srivastava, Gaurav Saukhatme, Ananthram Swami, Paulo Tabuada, Don Towsley, Nitin Vaidya and Venu Veeravalli
    IEEE Computer, pp. 24-36, vol. 51, November 2018.
  • Multi-Domain Effects and the Internet of Battlefield Things
    Stephen Russell, Tarek Abdelzaher, Niranjan Suri
    In Proc. MILCOM, Norfolk, VA, November 2019.
  • The Multi-domain Effects Loop: From Future Concepts to Research Challenges
    Tarek Abdelzaher, Adam Taliaferro, Paul Sullivan, Stephen Russell
    In Proc. SPIE Defense + Commercial Sensing, April 2020.