Publication

The mission of the SERC is to research and analyze advanced and emerging systems engineering practices and relevant technologies to address the full spectrum of DoD systems, from capability areas, enterprise systems, and Systems-of-Systems, down to cyber-physical systems and subsystems, with the goal of ensuring consistency and systems engineering excellence throughout the system’s lifecycle. The research focus of the SERC is producing new and improved SE methods, processes and tools to advance the practice of systems engineering within DoD. This particular research task is concerned with the creation of a Model Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) testbed comprising methods and tools that facilitate demonstration, integration, and experimentation with a variety of models and algorithms that support MBSE.

This report documents the accomplishments in creating a minimum viable testbed for MBSE research. We define a minimum viable testbed as the minimum set of functions needed to support demonstration, integration, and experimentation. The testbed that we created comprises components that allow research teams to rapidly initiate activities associated with the engineering of autonomous vehicles (systems), an area of shared interest among a subset of SERC researchers. These components include: scenario builder, scenario-driven dashboard, systems modeling techniques, optimization algorithms, and hardware specifications (for experimental subscale vehicles and related equipment).

The key benefits of the testbed for MBSE researchers are:

• Easy entry into field: A research team will be able to start quickly with “zero-dollar” investment by installing the software and running prebuilt simulation scenarios
• Reduced Risk in Experimentation: Experimental work can be initiated using known, proven designs, without the need to design new vehicles and become expert “makers”
• Easy comparison: It will be possible to compare research results from different research teams in a straightforward way
• Enablement of best practices: Rapid dissemination of extensions (new and modified scenarios and vehicles) to the SERC research community