Detecting Hostile Intent

Our research seeks to answer the following question: How can we detect an attack before it is too late? We are particularly interested in asymmetric situations, where individuals or small teams are potential attackers. Human movement may reveal intent early enough to allow for interception. We have performed human subject experiments in which the subjects seek to reach an objective but try to deceive any observer about their destination. Our results suggest that movement patterns can provide early clues about an intended destination, even if the subject is trying to deceive. Our current experiments introduce obstacles at different locations: obstacles strategically placed may provide early clues about hostile intent. We are also examining possible ways to improve an observer's ability to classify the movement patterns as deceptive or not.

Jian, J-Y., Matsuka, T., Sakamoto, Y., & Nickerson, J. V. (in review). Detecting hostile intent in coarse motion trajectories.

Jian, J-Y., Matsuka, T., & Nickerson, J. V. (2006). Towards Deceptive Intention: Finding Trajectories and its Analysis. Proceedings of the 50th Annual Human Factors and Ergonomics Meeting, San Francisco, CA.

Jian, J-Y., Matsuka, T., & Nickerson, J. V. (2006) Recognizing Deception in Trajectories. In R. Sun and N. Miyake (Eds.), Proceedings of the 28^th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society. Vancouver, Canada: Cognitive Science Society.