Through its Personalized Assistant that Learns (PAL) program, DARPA created cognitive computing systems to make military decision-making more efficient and more effective at multiple levels of command; reduce the need for large command staffs; and enable smaller, more mobile, and less vulnerable command centers. DARPA worked with military users to refine PAL prototypes for operational use, and with the defense acquisition community to transition PAL technologies into military systems.
Elements of DARPA’s PAL program, for example, were integrated into the U.S. Army’s Command Post of the Future, which integrates data from different feeds into a single display and today contributes to more timely decisions and coordinated operations on a daily basis around the world. Advances stemming from the agency’s PAL program were applied not only for military users but also to enable voice-based interaction with civilian handheld devices. This led to the 2007 launch of Siri Inc., later acquired by Apple Inc., which further advanced and then integrated the Siri/PAL technology into the Apple mobile operating system.
