VALIDATION OF ARCHITECTURE MODELS FOR COORDINATION OF UNMANNED AIR AND GROUND VEHICLES VIA EXPERIMENTATION

Abstract

This thesis presents a model-based systems engineering methodology for employing architecture in system analysis (MBSE MEASA) for the cooperation of cross-domain unmanned vehicles conducting humanitarian assistance and disaster relief (HA/DR). The comprehensive architecture description developed in this paper uses Systems Modeling Language (SysML), which supports the assessment of system requirements for systems engineering. It also uses the Department of Defense Architectural Framework (DoDAF) to expand on the utility of the MEASA methodology, providing an additional level of detail for analyzing collaborative cross-domain unmanned systems performance. The architecture models focus on the interaction between unmanned air vehicles (UAVs) and unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) and use the relationship of system architecture products and model-based systems engineering analysis to quantify system performance. The applied methodology highlights the feasibility of a UAV-UGV team collaboratively conducting structured, rudimentary tasks in a mission scenario. The result of this research is a validated and executable system architecture for cross-domain collaborative unmanned vehicles. The architecture serves as the conceptual template to guide future research and development of unmanned vehicles.