Developed for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and being tested by the Navy, MACOE is an infrastructure that allows heterogeneous-agent systems to interoperate and cooperate among themselves. For systems that deploy thousands of agents, MACOE makes possible for the first time the ability of these systems to successfully execute, collaborate, and learn in a controlled manner. It enables dynamic agent ensembles created by different vendors to cooperate robustly and flexibly. MACOE provides an architectural framework; co-existence, communications, and collaboration standards; facility to assemble commonly used services and support applications; and a small set of basic services.
For the warfighter, MACOE automates processes so decision-makers can quickly make the right decision based on pertinent data. Part of MACOE is a system of collaborating agents called the GRID, which makes the warfighter's job a lot easier and safer: Personal agents tell the GRID the locations of warfighters, what they're doing, and status of their resources among other things. It even adjusts to warfighters to reconcile their overall goals and priorities.