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Charles River Analytics Improves Sensor Fusion Systems for Missile Defense Agency

Charles River Analytics, developer of intelligent systems solutions, has announced a follow-on contract to improve the performance of sensor fusion systems in ballistic missile defense systems for the Missile Defense Agency (MDA). In the Adaptive Management and Mitigation of Uncertainty in Fusion effort, or AMMUF, Charles River is improving how sensor fusion systems are built and configured. The two year contract is valued close to $1 million.

“AMMUF will help the Missile Defense Agency improve ballistic missile defense by reasoning about the impact of uncertainty on sensor fusion systems at the architectural level, as opposed to the more common algorithm level,” explained Dr. Brian Ruttenberg, the Principal Investigator on AMMUF and Senior Scientist at Charles River. “To reason about such complex systems is tremendously difficult without the aid of innovative tools like Figaro, a probabilistic programming language.”

Figaro is an open-sourced language that enables developers to create tools that help people make better decisions in the face of uncertainty. Learn more about Figaro.

“In AMMUF, we will model the entire fusion process as a probabilistic model using Figaro and reason about the different design and algorithmic decisions that can be made by system engineers,” Dr. Ruttenberg added. “AMMUF will enable system engineers to determine the optimal fusion configuration in different missile defense contexts, giving battlefield operators the most accurate and efficient information about missile threats.”

AMMUF is one of several efforts Charles River has developed for the MDA. Other efforts include behavior modeling capabilities in MORPHICa simulation optimization engine in SIMON, and real-time, sensor network optimization software in SNOMAN.


This material is based upon work supported by the Missile Defense Agency under Contract No. HQ0147-15-C-7402. Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Missile Defense Agency.   

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16-MDA-8799 (10 August 16)

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