CONFERENCE:
Detection and Remediation Technologies for Mines and Minelike Targets VI 
Abinash C. Dubey, James F. Harvey, J. Thomas Broach, Vivian George 

ABSTRACT TITLE:  
Path Planning for Mine Countermeasures Command and Control

AUTHOR LISTING: 
Principal Author: 
Christine D. Piatko 
The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory 
11100 Johns Hopkins Road 
Laurel, Maryland 20723-6099 
Christine.Piatko@jhuapl.edu 
Phone: (443)778-6584 
Fax:  (443)778-6904 

Secondary Authors: 
Carey Priebe and Lenore Cowen 
The Johns Hopkins University 
Department of Mathematical Sciences 
Baltimore, Maryland 21218 
cep@jhu.edu and cowen@brutus.mts.jhu.edu 
Tel: (410) 516-7200 and (410) 516-7043 
Fax: (410) 516-7459

I-Jeng Wang and Paul McNamee 
The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory 
11100 Johns Hopkins Road 
Laurel, Maryland 20723-6099 
I-Jeng.Wang@jhuapl.edu and Paul.McNamee@jhuapl.edu 
Phone: (443)778-6204 and (443)778-3816 
Fax:  (443)778-6904

ABSTRACT TEXT:

The future success of Navy-Marine Corps operations in the extended
littoral battlespace will depend critically on organic mine
countermeasure capabilities.  A battlegroup commander will require
tools to rapidly detect, classify, and identify mines and form a
tactical picture of the mined areas, so a decision can be made to punch
through the minefield, avoid it, or wait for dedicated mine
countermeasures forces to clear it.

With funding from the Office of Naval Research Organic Mine
Countermeasures program, we are developing a command and control
framework for mine countermeasures based on probabilistic
classification and path planning under uncertainty.  Data from
probabilistic mine classifiers can be used by a path planning tool to
generate information comparing the relative utility and risk associated
with different routes through a minefield.

We are also developing methods that will allow a battlegroup
commander to evaluate alternative route options while searching for low
risk paths.  A risk management framework can be used to describe the
relative values of such different factors as risk versus time to
objective, giving the commander the capability to balance path safety
against other mission objectives.

Finally, we are investigating prototype visualization techniques to
display mines with uncertain locations and highlight alternative routes
through minefields and obstacles.  These features are being integrated
in a prototype display to present the commander with an integrated
picture of the tactical scene including available geographic
information, mine detections, and potential routes.

KEY WORDS:
mines, path planning, risk management, optimization, visualization

BRIEF BIOGRAPHY:
Dr. Christine D. Piatko received her Ph.D. degree from Cornell
University in 1993 in Computer Science.  Since 1997, she has been a
Senior Computer Scientist with the Research and Technology Development
Center at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory.  
She conducts research in algorithms, computational geometry, and
visualization.