System of Systems - Innovations for 21st Century

Systems engineering is at a crossroad now at the beginning of the 21st century. One of the main challenges of any paradigms in systems engineering is being able to handle complex systems under unforeseen uncertainties. A system may be called complex if its dimension (order) is too high and its model (if available) is nonlinear, interconnected, and information on the system is uncertain such that classical techniques cannot easily handle the problem. A system of systems (SoS) is a "super system," or an integration of complex systems coordinated together in such a way to achieve a wider goal with possible higher significance. Applications of SoS are quite extensive - examples are future combat mission, global warming, Mars missions, air traffic system, global Earth observation system, electric power grid system, energy systems, etc. Computational intelligence (CI) or soft computing, a consortium of fuzzy logic (approximate reasoning), neuro-computing (learning), genetic algorithms and genetic programming (optimization), has proven to be a powerful set of tools for adding autonomy and semi-autonomy to many complex systems. For such systems the size of autonomous controller architecture will be nearly infinite. In this presentation system of systems are being introduced, challenges are brought up and potential solutions and needs are discussed. Special emphasis on UTSAACE Center's SoS technology will be demonstrated. Some animated and experimental implementation as well as media movies and clips will be shown.