SIFT's Research Areas

SIFT employs the top researchers in Artificial Intelligence, Computer Security, and Human Factors. SIFT's expert researchers have performed pioneering research in several areas. We have divided our projects into several categories.

Etiquette

SIFT has developed a core body of research capabilities in etiquette models and their applications. SIFT has been developing the concept of computational representations of human etiquette under internal research and development funds since 2001.

Playbook

SIFT researchers pioneered  a human-automation integration architecture called Playbook®, in which humans and automation share a task model – the possible ways to achieve an outcome, and what everyone is supposed to do in the play. The user can select - either at a very high level, or if time permits and circumstances require, at much finer levels – how the tasks will be performed, and by whom. Thus, Playbook allows precise control over delegation of tasks to automation. We maintain that Playbook can be used as a testbed for examining different approaches to supervisory control.

Planning

Automated Planning is a central research area for SIFT. SIFT researchers have used hierarchical task network (HTN) planning to develop a shared human/automation task model in Playbook® systems. As part of this effort, SIFT has led the maintenance of the open source SHOP2 HTN planner, originally developed by Dana Nau's research group at the University of Maryland. SIFT researchers have applied HTN planning in many areas including planning for unmanned air vehicles (UAVs), automatically composing semantic web services into workflows, etc.

SIFT researchers have been active in the area where planning, control theory and automatic verification intersect. Our work on the CIRCA system involves automatically planning (synthesizing) control programs that provide hard real-time performance guarantees, allowing them to be used in mission-critical applications. The CIRCA technology also allows non real-time computation techniques (planning, search, optimization) to be interleaved with real-time computations in an integrated system. SIFT have applied the CIRCA technology to work on both deterministic and stochastic systems, in areas including UAV control and satellite and cyber-defense.

Automated Interface Evaluation Tools

SIFT personnel have more than 20 years of experience in constructing computational reasoning approaches to UI design and management. We will refer to such approaches as Automated Interface Reasoning Systems. SIFT's work in this field has collectively evolved, evaluated and demonstrated a representation and reasoning approach with more power and a far greater pedigree than most. Our approach offers a rich description of the information needs of user tasks, of the information provided by displays and, through computational reasoning over these descriptions, the ability to quantify when, how and to what degree UI meets the needs of users. Much, but not all, of our work has been done for military aircraft, including the U.S. Army’s Rotorcraft Pilot’s Associate (RPA). In RPA, we demonstrated one of the few automated interface reasoning systems yet to operate and provide benefit in a live flight test vehicle. We have also applied these techniques to displays for military command and control, oil refinery operations, automobile and truck driving, building security and comfort management and coordinated aiding and monitoring devices for home care for the elderly.

Computer Security

We have applied core SIFT technologies of machine learning, planning and human interfaces to problems of cyber security. For example, we have applied intent recognition techniques to the problem of identifying the objectives of cyber attackers, in order to distinguish serious threats from "ankle biters." Current projects include applying qualitative probabilistic reasoning to network intrusion detection, helping security analysts tame the floods of false positives generated by conventional intrusion detection systems. Another project applies planning techniques to coordinate cyber defense across large enterprises. SIFT's most recent project applies machine learning to actively deceive cyber attackers so that they reveal facts about their true identity.

Intent Recognition

When we see someone carrying out different tasks, we can draw inferences about the goals that link their actions. Automatic intent recognition, also referred to as plan recognition, is a critical challenge for intelligent user interfaces (to determine what a user is trying to do, and how the UI can offer help), computer security (to determine the objectives of an attacker), sketch understanding, natural language understanding, and other contemporary problems. SIFT researchers pioneered the use of Bayesian probabilistic methods in intent recognition. In cooperation with University researchers, SIFT has developed the Yappr system for intent recognition that achieves new levels of computational efficiency by using sophisticate techniques based on parsing.

Interface Design

SIFT researchers have developed novel tools to improve information flow between the system and the user. We have employed various techniques including designing adaptable interfaces and using ecological design techniques which take advantage of the user's cognitive abilities to improve situational awareness which ultimately improves the transfer of information between the system and the user.

Human Performance and Cognition

SIFT researchers have developed tools to improve human performance in various domains from activities of daily living (ADL) to performance on the job through the use of cognitive decision aids.