Communication Capability for a Simulation-Based Test and Evaluation Framework for Autonomous Systems

The design and testing process for collaborative autonomous systems can be extremely complex and time-consuming, so it is advantageous to begin testing early in the design. A Test & Evaluation (T&E) Framework was previously developed to enable the testing of autonomous software at various levels of mixed reality. The Framework assumes a modular approach to autonomous software development, which introduces the possibility that components are not in the same stage of development. The T&E Framework allows testing to begin early in a simulated environment, with the autonomous software methodically migrating from virtual to augmented to physical environments as component development advances. This thesis extends the previous work to include a communication layer allowing collaborative autonomous systems to communicate with each other and with a virtual environment. Traversing through the virtuality-reality spectrum results in different communication needs for collaborative autonomous systems, namely the use of different communication protocols at each level of the spectrum. For example, testing in a fully simulated environment might be on a single processor or allow wired communication if distributed to different computing platforms. Alternatively, testing in a fully physical environment imposes the need for wireless communication. However, an augmented environment may require the concurrent use of multiple protocols. This research extends the Test & Evaluation Framework by developing a heterogeneous communication layer to facilitate the implementation and testing of collaborative autonomous systems throughout various levels of the virtuality-reality spectrum. The communication layer presented in this thesis allows developers of the core autonomous software to be shielded from the configuration of communication needs, with changes to the communication environment not resulting in changes to the autonomous software

Prototyping a process-centered environment

This paper describes an experimental system developed and used as a vehicle for prototyping the Arcadia-1 software development environment. Prototyping is viewed as a knowledge acquisition process and is used to reduce risks in software development by gaining rapid feedback about the suitability of a production system before the system is completed. Prototyping a software development environment is particularly important due to the lack of experience with them. There is an acute need to acquire knowledge about user interaction requirements for software environments. These needs are especially important for the Arcadia project, as it is one of the first attempts to construct a process-centered environment. Our prototyping effort addresses questions about effective interaction with a process-centered environment by simulating how Arcadia-1 would interact with users in a representative range of usage scenarios. We built a prototyping system, called PRODUCER, and used it to generate a variety of prototypes simulating user interactions with Arcadia-1 process programs.Experience with PRODUCER indicates that our approach is effective at risk reduction. The prototypes greatly improved communication with our customer. They confirmed some of our design decisions but also redirected our research efforts as a result of unexpected insight. We also found that prototyping usage scenarios provides conceptual guides and design information for process programmers. Most of the benefits of our prototyping effort derive from developing and interacting with usage scenarios, so our approach is generalizable to other prototyping systems. This paper reports on our prototyping approach and our experience in prototyping a process-centered environment

A NASA initiative: Software engineering for reliable complex systems

The objective is the development of methods, technology, and skills that will enable NASA to cost-effectively specify, build, and manage reliable software which can evolve and be maintained over an extended period. The need for such software is rooted in the increasing integration of software and computing components into NASA systems. Current NASA Software Engineering expertise was applied toward some of the largest reliable systems including: shuttle launch; ground support; shuttle simulation; minor control; satellite tracking; and scientific data systems. Unfortunately, no theory exists for reliable complex software systems. NASA is seeking to fill this theoretical gap through a number of approaches. One such approach is to conduct research on theoretical foundations for managing complex software systems. It includes: communication models, new and modified paradigms, and life-cycle models. Another approach is research in the theoretical foundations for reliable software development and validation. It focuses upon formal specifications, programming languages, software engineering systems, software reuse, formal verification, and software safety. Further approaches involve benchmarking a NASA software environment, experimentation within the NASA context, evolution of present NASA methodology, and transfer of technology to the space station software support environment

Beyond the border: A comparative literature review on communication practices for agile global outsourced software development projects

Software development is increasingly heading in the direction of combining agile software development practices and outsourcingsoftware development to external vendors worldwide. The resultingagile global outsourced software development (AGOSD) projects are characterized by applying agile methods to distributed environments, whichresults in several problems for collaboration and coordination. Specifically, communication between the project participantshas been found to be a major challenge in distributed environment. Therefore, our study investigates the problem of improving communication in distributed settings by identifying suitable communication practicesfor usage within AGOSD projects.Based on an extensive literature review,our study (1) provides an overview of adequate practices for usage in AGOSD and (2) points out differences to traditional communication practices ofagile software development(ASD)projects used in collocated, non-distributed environments

Investigating an ‘Agile-Rigid’ Approach in Globally Distributed Requirements Analysis

The global software development environment brings with itself abundant business opportunities as well as challenges in terms of coordination, communication and control. Recent years have also witnessed the growth of the agile movement. To address the global software development challenges there is a need to combine the flexibility offered by the growing agile development approaches with the rigidity offered by the traditional plan-based approaches. This paper reports an exploratory quasi-experimental study, which investigates the performance of requirements analysis projects in an ‘agile-rigid’ distributed environment. The study yields several interesting conclusions that can assist organizations in managing their global software projects more effectively. Our experiment indicates that project monitoring and control, project communication, and process facilitation between peer teams significantly influence the success of such projects. Creation of an agile-rigid environment can help organizations mitigate various risks inherent in globally distributed software development

Design and Control of a Flight-Style AUV with Hovering Capability

The small flight-style Delphin AUV is designed to evaluate the performance of a long range survey AUV with the additional capability to hover and manoeuvre at slow speed. Delphin’s hull form is based on a scaled version of Autosub6000, and in addition to the main thruster and control surfaces at the rear of the vehicle, Delphin is equipped with four rim driven tunnel thrusters. In order to reduce the development cycle time, Delphin was designed to use commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) sensors and thrusters interfaced to a standard PC motherboard running the control software within the MS Windows environment. To further simplify the development, the autonomy system uses the State-Flow Toolbox within the Matlab/Simulink environment. While the autonomy software is running, image processing routines are used for obstacle avoidance and target tracking, within the commercial Scorpion Vision software. This runs as a parallel thread and passes results to Matlab via the TCP/IP communication protocol. The COTS based development approach has proved effective. However, a powerful PC is required to effectively run Matlab and Simulink, and, due to the nature of the Windows environment, it is impossible to run the control in hard real-time. The autonomy system will be recoded to run under the Matlab Windows Real-Time Windows Target in the near future. Experimental results are used to demonstrating the performance and current capabilities of the vehicle are presented

An agile enterprise architecture driven model for geographically distributed agile development

Agile development is a highly collaborative environment, which requires active communication (i.e. effective and efficient communication) among stakeholders. The active communication in geographically distributed agile development (GDAD) environment is difficult to achieve due to many challenges. Literature has reported that active communication play critical role in enhancing GDAD performance through reducing the cost and time of a project. However, little empirical evidence is known about how to study and establish active communication construct in GDAD in terms of its dimensions, determinants and effects on GDAD performance. To address this knowledge gap, this paper describes an enterprise architecture (EA) driven research model to identify and empirically examine the GDAD active communication construct. This model can be used by researchers and practitioners to examine the relationships among two dimensions of GDAD active communication (effectiveness and efficiency), one antecedent that can be controlled (agile EA), and four dimensions of GDAD performance (on-Time completion, on-budget completion, software functionality and software quality)

Optimized Strategy in Cloud-Native Environment for Inter-Service Communication in Microservices

Cloud computing has become a prominent technology in the software development industry. The term “cloud-native” is derived from cloud computing technologies and refers to the development and deployment of applications in a cloud environment. In the software industry, most enterprise-grade software buildings use the microservice architecture and cloud natively, ultimately leading to an expansive development in the software development framework. Microservices are deployed in a distributed environment and function as independent services. However, they need to communicate with each other in order to fulfill the functional requirement. Additional latency will be introduced when communicating with other services. Hence, it will impact the overall application response time and throughput. This research proposes a solution for the aforementioned problem in the cloud-native environment. A Request-response-based TCP communication solution has been developed and tested in the cloud-native, containerized environment. Experimental results showed that the turnaround time of the proposed solution is shorter than that of traditional HTTP communication methods. Furthermore, the results summarize that both vertical and horizontal scaling are improving the overall performance of the systems performance in terms of response time. Conclusively, the proposed solution improved the microservice performance and preserved the existing cloud-native qualities, such as scalability, maintainability, and portability

Flexible Global Software Development (GSD): Antecedents of Success in Requirements Analysis

Globalization of software development has resulted in a rapid shift away from the traditional collocated, on-site development model, to the offshoring model. Emerging trends indicate an increasing interest in offshoring even in early phases like requirements analysis. Additionally, the flexibility offered by the agile development approach makes it attractive for adaptation in globally distributed software work. A question of significance then is what impacts the success of offshoring earlier phases, like requirements analysis, in a flexible and globally distributed environment? This article incorporates the stance of control theory to posit a research model that examines antecedent factors such as requirements change, facilitation by vendor and client site-coordinators, control, and computer-mediated communication. The impact of these factors on success of requirements analysis projects in a “flexible” global setting is tested using two quasi-experiments involving students from Management Development Institute, India and Marquette University, USA. Results indicate that formal modes of control significantly influence project success during requirements analysis. Further, facilitation by both client and vendor site coordinators positively impacts requirements analysis success