ANN ARBOR, MICHIGAN, January 17, 2008 — Soar Technology, Inc. (SoarTech) is pleased to announce that Dr. Michael van Lent will join SoarTech in March 2008 as the company’s Chief Scientist. Dr. van Lent will be relocating to Ann Arbor and leaving his current post as Associate Director for Games Research at the Institute for Creative Technologies (ICT) at the University of Southern California.

After earning a BA in Computer Science at Williams College, Dr. van Lent received a Masters in Computer Science at the University of Tennessee and PhD at the University of Michigan in 2000. Prior to receiving his PhD, he worked at the Navy Center for Applied Research in Artificial Intelligence (NCARAI) at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory. He joined ICT in 2001, where he became a Project Leader and a Research Associate Professor in the Computer Science department at USC. He specialized in research and development of game technology for Army applications in immersive training, social simulation, and education. Dr. van Lent has participated in the development of many of ICT’s immersive training applications including Full Spectrum Warrior, Full Spectrum Command, the Joint Fires and Effects Trainer System (JFETS), and ELECT BiLAT. In 2007 he was promoted to Associate Director for Games Research. Dr. van Lent serves on various editorial boards and edits IEEE Computer’s Entertainment Computing Column. Dr. van Lent succeeds Dr. Robert Wray as SoarTech’s Chief Scientist. Dr. Wray will be resuming his role as Senior Scientist for the company.

Dr. van Lent will lead SoarTech’s research and development of artificial intelligence for training and serious games, transitioning research into engineered solutions.

Soar Technology, Inc. is a leading developer of advanced intelligent agent software and cognitive systems. SoarTech’s state-of-the-art “intelligent agents” provide human-like reasoning in software to automate complex tasks, simplify human-system interaction, or simulate human-like behavior for military and civilian applications such as games, simulation, training, intelligence analysis, and robot command and control. Based in Ann Arbor, Michigan and with a satellite office in Orlando, Florida, SoarTech was founded in 1998 as a spin-off from the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory of the University of Michigan.

Contact: James Rosbe, President
Tel. 734-327-8000 x206
Email: rosbe@soartech.com

Soar Technology, Inc was awarded an Army contract for applying technologies of battlefield enemy estimates to improve Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) missions. The technology, called Predictive OPFORS for Planning and Simulation (PROPS), applies adversarial reasoning to improve battlefield situation awareness management. The effort, funded through the Small Business Innovative Research program, represents a potential transition of technology developed as part of DARPA IXO’s Real-Time Adversarial Intelligence and Decision-Making (RAID) program.

Under the contract, Soar Technology, and its subcontractors TechTeam Government Solutions, Alion Science and Technology, and Battelle Memorial Institute, will focus on evaluating the effectiveness of integrating PROPS with the Army’s Collection Management Tool (CMT), the next generation intelligence collection and asset management tool recently developed and deployed by the U.S. Army’s Battle Command Battle Lab at Ft. Huachuca (BCBL-H). Soar Technology will be working with the Battle Lab to test the efficacy of using RAID’s estimating technologies to support Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR). If the technical and experimental evaluation is successful, the U.S. Army Intelligence Center intends to deploy it with tactical units to assess the efficacy of the system, potentially leading to further deployment with future forces.

PROPS provides the following capabilities:

(1) a continuous, dynamic intelligence running estimate (IRE) of the battlefield;
(2) a map of battlefield uncertainty and threat over time; and
(3)annotated search locations targeted specifically at reducing uncertainty in high threat regions.

PROPS’ concept of operations addresses a key bottleneck in current collection efforts: keeping a collection management plan in sync with current intelligence data. The system directly enhances battlefield situation management by integrating an automatically generated intelligence running estimate (IRE) with an analysis of battlefield uncertainty and threat to produce suggested ISR search regions. These search regions are integrated with the CMT’s collection plans to provide commanders with an integrated, actionable picture of the battlefield. This will allow intelligence teams to search locations that are (1) smaller, (2) better targeted, and (3) closely tied to estimates of enemy location and intentions. The collection process becomes more efficient because there is less area to cover and better specified instruction to the asset management teams.

The PROPS system’s intelligence running estimate capabilities leverage component technology developed for DARPA’s Real-time Adversarial Intelligence and Decision-Making (RAID) program. The RAID program focuses on the challenge of anticipating enemy actions in a military operation. For RAID, Soar Technology and TechTeam developed an Adversarial Reasoning Module (ARM) which estimates the actions of enemy units hours into the future by combining inductive reasoning over models of human intention and statistical models of battlefield threat with swarming polyagent models of movement and battlefield dynamics. This technology was shown in experiments to be able to estimate opponent force intentions and locations comparably to a competent human staff.

Soar Technology, Inc. is a leading developer of intelligent autonomous agent software and cognitive systems. SoarTech’s state-of-the-art “intelligent agents” provide human-like reasoning in software to automate complex tasks, simplify human-system interaction, or simulate human-like behavior for military and civilian applications such as simulation, training, experimentation, intelligence analysis, and command and control of human and robotic forces. Based in Ann Arbor, Michigan and with a satellite office in Orlando, Florida, SoarTech was founded in 1998 as a spin-off from the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory of the University of Michigan, and has been awarded R&D contracts from more than 20 U.S. military, intelligence and space research organizations.

A select group of modeling & simulation research groups exhibited their work at the Second Annual Congressional Modeling & Simulation Expo on July 19th. SoarTech’s presentation included a live demonstration of its human behavior models Helo-Soar™ (an RWA tactical air pilot), DI-Soar™ (a dismounted infantryman) and supporting technologies. The Congressional M&S Caucus, which sponsors the event, worked with M&S leaders to implement the agenda recommendations formulated by the National Training and Simulation Association (NTSA). The recommendations were presented to caucus members on Capitol Hill during the Expo.

Soar Technology will receive a prestigious Special Tribute Award for its Employees First program at the Arbor Awards for Excellence on Tuesday, March 6 at the Ritz Carlton in Dearborn, Michigan. The Arbor Awards for Excellence, which recognizes best practices and innovation in human resources, is sponsored by The Arbor Consulting Group, Inc., a national human resource consulting firm based in Northville, and Eastern Michigan University Master of Science HR/OD Program.

Soar Technology’s Employees First is a highly flexible human resource program that emphasizes work and life balance for its specialized R&D workforce. Soar Tech’s work/life culture includes a mix of scientific exploration and practical engineering, flexible work hours, a special emphasis on family, giving back to the community, and a fun atmosphere. “We’re very proud of the culture we’ve created with our employees, which fosters collaboration, debate and discovery,” says Jim Rosbe, SoarTech’s CEO. “The combination of our culture and our high-level talent is key to our success.”

“Artificial intelligence is a highly specialized niche. Recruiting and retaining top talent is a high priority for us,” says Deborah Webster, Vice President of Administration, Soar Technology. “Achieving a balance between work and personal life — putting our employees first — has been part of Soar Tech’s culture from our start. We have found that our employees are our best source for new employees.”

Glenn Taylor will participate in a special panel at this year’s Behavior Representation in Modeling and Simulation (BRIMS) conference,”Social and Cultural Modeling: Can We Notice the Difference Yet? (or Can You Hear It Now?).” The panel is tentatively scheduled for March 28th.

The panel will address challenges in social-cultural modeling, and present a framework for understanding how to think through the issues, requirements, dimensionality, and tradeoffs involved in building social-cultural models.

Other panel participants will be: Dr. David Matsumoto (San Diego St. Univ), Dr. Janet Sutton (AFRL), Dr. Mike Van Lent (ICT), and Dr. Stacy Marsella (ISI).

Soar Technology Research Scientist Glenn Taylor will deliver the paper “Towards Automating Airspace Management” at the First IEEE Symposium on Computational Intelligence for Security and Defense Applications (CISDA 2007) in Honolulu, HI, April 1-5. The paper discusses the scientific underpinnings of the AutoATS system and its recent performance in the AMRDEC JAMUS2006 experiments. AutoATS was built as part of an Army Phase II SBIR project, AutoATC, which seeks to develop an autonomous, agent-based system to perform the role of air traffic controller/air traffic services cell in experimental and training simulations.

Soar Technology is proud to have been selected as one of the 2007 Michigan 50 Companies to Watch by the Edward Lowe Foundation. This is an awards program celebrating established and growing entrepreneurs: high-performing, second-stage companies known for their performance in the marketplace, innovative products, unique processes or philanthropic actions. Companies are evaluated for demonstrated past growth and future success, as well as strengths that make the company stand out from its competition or make it a leader in its field. Soar Technology will be presented with the award as part of the Michigan Celebrates Small Business event on April 12, 2007 at the Kellogg Hotel & Conference Center in East Lansing.