Multi-relationship evaluation design: Formalization of an automatic test plan generator

The number of intelligent and advanced technologies in the manufacturing, military and homeland security industries is increasing. Evaluating these technologies is a critical step in their development cycle. Test designers have put forth considerable effort in creating methods to accelerate the test-plan development process. The multi-relationship evaluation design (MRED) methodology is an automatic test plan generator. MRED collects multiple inputs, processes them interactively with a test designer and outputs evaluation blueprints that specify key test-plan characteristics. This paper describes MRED’s process and presents the mathematical representations used by MRED and the stakeholder preference handling strategy. A robot arm is the example used to demonstrate MRED.

► The multi-relationship evaluation design (MRED) model is presented including inputs and outputs. ► The MRED process is formalized using a robotic arm example as input into the MRED generator. ► MRED considers the relationships and hierarchies among test plan blueprint elements during the robot arm example. ► Stakeholder preferences are captured on an ordinal, linguistic scale and handled on an interval scale using modified evaluative voting method.