Autonomous Systems Modeling During Early Architecture Development

Autonomous systems are a complex integration of human intelligence and machine automation capable of adapting to unforeseen events. Proliferation of these systems has accelerated, in part, to meet the ever-increasing demand to develop and use unmanned vehicles to conduct surveillance and reconnaissance missions. During system development, an understanding of the complex relationship between system autonomy, human interaction and machine automation is critical to support early trade studies that address architectural comparisons, scenario concepts of operations, life cycle logistic needs, and total life cycle costs. This paper develops a two dimensional algorithmic methodology and framework tools for contributing to trade space assessments during the early design phases with the intent of supporting design optimization.