The Naval Postgraduate School and Air Force Institute of Technology have developed affordability tradeoff analysis methods employing architectural and parametric cost models applied to Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS). A focus is at the interface of cost and architecture models for the automatic extraction of system size attributes from the architecture models at the levels of software, system and UAS domain product line. Costs can then be associated with architecture variants to assess tradeoffs between affordability and other ilities.

Cost models have been extended for integration with formal Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) methods including SysML, Orthogonal Variability Modeling (OVM), discrete event simulation, and system behavioral modeling with Monterey Phoenix (MP). Relevant case studies for small UAS are continuing as the methods are being refined. Existing models were applied to demonstrate tradeoff analyses, and new models were created to better represent actual conditions empirically observed in practice.

The talk will overview the modeling methods and their interfaces, case studies applied to single system architectures, and current investigations with UAS domain reference architectures developed by AFIT.

Raymond Madachy, Ph.D., is a Professor in the Systems Engineering Department at the Naval Postgraduate School. His research interests include system and software cost modeling for total ownership cost; affordability and tradespace analysis; modeling and simulation of systems and software engineering processes, and the DoD acquisition process; integrating systems engineering and software engineering disciplines, and empirical-based research with process simulation.

Dr. Madachy is currently on sabbatical as a Visiting Professor at the Air Force Institute of Technology. He is learning and conducting research in Unmanned Aerial Systems, flight testing and autonomy.

His books include Software Process Dynamics, co-authoring Software Cost Estimation with COCOMO II, Software Cost Estimation Metrics Manual for Defense Systems, What Every Engineer Should Know about Modeling and Simulation, and is currently writing Systems Engineering Principles for Software Engineers.

The Autonomy and Navigation Technology (ANT) Center at the Air Force Institute of Technology (AFIT) has begun development of a new Reference Architecture for Autonomy to begin to answer the myriad of needs within research, development and testing of autonomous and/or cooperative systems. This Reference Architecture will initially cater to small unmanned aerial and ground vehicles and the interfaces and operators that would be used to direct these vehicles in accomplishing tasks. The framework should be flexible to allow achievement of effective mission capabilities with autonomous and cooperative agents. The framework will consist of hardware and software models and documentation that will enable researchers to develop focused autonomy capabilities in a stable and comparable testbed, with the intention of accommodating both simulated and real world flight test where appropriate. The Reference Architecture will facilitate reuse of hardware/software components, thus allowing accelerated design-build-test cycles and progress towards greater capabilities from autonomous/cooperative agent systems. The first spiral will focus on multi-vehicle aerial/ground missions and include several mission templates that exercise a range of human-autonomy interactions.

Dr. David Jacques is a Professor of Systems Engineering within the Department of Systems Engineering and Management at the Air Force Institute of Technology (AFIT). Dr. Jacques joined the AFIT faculty as a military member in 1999 and became a civilian faculty member in 2004 upon retirement from active duty in the Air Force. In prior military assignments he served in various capacities associated with development planning, research and development, developmental test, and intelligence analysis of foreign weapon systems. Within SERC, Dr. Jacques leads the AFIT efforts within the long standing "Systems Qualities Ontology, Tradespace, and Affordability (SQOTA)" research project, a now 7 year effort uniting nine of the SERC Collaborating Universities. Dr. Jacques' research interests include effectiveness of wide area search systems, cooperative behavior and control of Unmanned Air Vehicles (UAVs) and munitions, and early application of Systems Engineering for concept definition and requirements definition.

Reflecting the interdisciplinary nature of his research interests, his thesis advisement at AFIT has spanned seven academic programs and two academic departments. As a faculty researcher, he has served as a principal investigator on 32 funded research proposals at AFIT, and collaborated on 28 others. The total value of these 60 proposals is approximately $4.7 million in external funding. The research projects Dr. Jacques has been involved in have addressed critical problems and applications spanning the DOD and other government agencies. To date he has documented his research results in 26 archival journal publications, seven book chapters, one Systems Engineering case study, four magazine articles, 61 refereed conference papers, and numerous technical presentations and invited talks. Dr. Jacques is also an AFIT alum, earning his master's degree in Aeronautical Engineering in 1989 and his PhD in Systems Engineering in 1995.

Distributed autonomy pertains to a sociotechnical system in which geographically distributed human and software agents make independent observations, pool them to jointly determine the state of the environment, and then make collaborative decisions based on their shared goals and knowledge of environment state. This Talk presents ongoing research on adaptive cyber-physical-human system, an example of intelligent distributed autonomy. The perimeter security of a parked transport aircraft using multiple surveillance quadcopters is used as an illustrative example. The distributed system simulation comprises: a world server, which maintains the state of all world entities and runs continuous dynamic simulation of all quadcopters; a perimeter defense computer, which runs the dashboard controlling the quadcopters; and an opposing force computer, which runs the dashboard controlling the enemy unit. In this simulation, decision making is also distributed with sensor fusion agents (that determine environment state from sensor data) residing on the world server, and decision-making agents (that exploit knowledge of environment state information to make decisions) residing on the perimeter defense computer.

Professor Azad Madni is the Executive Director of the Systems Architecting and Engineering Program and Professor of Astronautical Engineering in the University of Southern California. He is also the Director of USC’s Distributed Autonomy and Intelligent Systems (DAIS) Laboratory. He has a courtesy joint appointment in the schools of Education and Medicine.

Dr. Madni conducts research in probabilistic model-based and machine learning approaches in engineering complex systems. His specific areas of research are engineered resilient systems, distributed autonomy and intelligent systems. His research sponsors include DoD-SERC, DARPA, DHS S&T, DTRA, OSD, MDA, ONR, NAVAIR, NAVSEA, SPAWAR, AFOSR, AFRL, ARI, ARL, RDECOM, CECOM, DOE, NIST, NASA, Boeing, Raytheon, Northrop Grumman Corporation, General Motors, SAIC, and Lockheed Martin Orincon.

An elected Fellow of AAAS, AIAA, INCOSE, IEEE (Life), IETE (Life), and SDPS (Life), a few of Dr. Madni's noteworthy awards in 2019 include AIAA/ASEE Leland Atwood Award, INCOSE Founders Award, ASME CIE Distinguished Leadership Award, and Engineers’ Council William B. Johnson International Inter-Professional Founders Award. He is also the recipient of the 2011 INCOSE Pioneer Award, IEEE SMC Award for leading the most active Systems Science and Engineering Technical Committee (MBSE), the 2006 SDPS C.V. Ramamoorthy Distinguished Scholar Award, and many more.

Additionally, Dr. Madni is the founder, CEO and chief scientist of Intelligent Systems Technology Inc, an award-winning high-tech company that he founded 25 years ago to pursue research in modeling and simulation technologies for education, training and performance support.

He received his B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. in Engineering from the University of California, Los Angeles, in 1968, 1971 and 1978, respectively. He is also a graduate of the AEA/Stanford Executive Institute program for senior executives. He is listed in Who’s Who in Science and Engineering, Who’s Who is Industry and Finance and Who’s Who in America.