Unmanned and Autonomous Systems of Systems Test and Evaluation: Challenges and Opportunities

Abstract

The introduction of Unmanned and Autonomous Systems (UAS) brings substantial, interesting, and in many cases, new challenges to the Department of Defense’s Test and Evaluation community. The test and evaluation of UASs becomes significantly more complicated than traditional systems, especially as we approach more fully autonomous systems and need to test integrated systems of systems in joint military operational testing environments. Compounding the multi-faceted considerations involved in test and evaluation, systems have continuously increasing complexity and capabilities and can be at different maturity levels. Emergent properties, particularly those that are unplanned and undesired, also need to be considered. Challenges identified by the Unmanned and Autonomous Systems Test community and related to the test and evaluation of the UASs are discussed. This paper presents various approaches for addressing these challenges including an innovative Prescriptive and Adaptive Testing Framework and decision support system, PATFrame.