Testability of a swarm robot using a System of Systems approach and discrete event simulation

A simulation framework using discrete event system specification (DEVS) and data encoded with Extensible Markup Language (XML) is presented to support agent-in-the-loop (AIL) simulations for large, complex, and distributed systems. A System of Systems (SoS) approach organizes the complex systems hierarchically. AIL simulations provide a necessary step in maintaining model continuity methods to achieve a greater degree of accuracy in systems analysis. The proposed SoS approach enables the simulation and analysis of these independent and cooperative systems by concentrating on the data transferred among systems to achieve interoperability instead of requiring the software modeling of global state spaces. The information exchanged is wrapped in XML to facilitate system integration and interoperability. A Groundscout is deployed as a real agent working cooperatively with virtual agents to form a robotic swarm in an example threat detection scenario. This scenario demonstrates the AIL framework's ability to successfully test a swarm robot for individual performance and swarm behavior. Results of the testing process show an increase of robot team size increases the rate of successfully investigating a threat while critical violations of the algorithm remained low despite packet loss.