Testability of a swarm robot using a system of systems approach and discrete event simulation

A system of systems (SoS) simulation framework using discrete event system specification (DEVS) and data encoded with Extensible Markup Language (XML) tags is presented to support agent-in-the-loop (AIL) simulations for large, complex, and distributed systems. AIL simulations provide a necessary step in maintaining model continuity methods to achieve a greater degree of accuracy in systems analysis. A system of systems approach enables the simulation and analysis of these independent and cooperative systems by concentrating on the data transferred among systems instead of determining global state spaces. A mobile robot is deployed as a real agent working cooperatively with virtual agents to form a robotic swarm in an example threat detection scenario. The swarm robot's performance is tracked and the emergent swarm behavior is also evaluated.