Cambridge, MA – The Lean Advancement Initiative (LAI) at MIT has been selected by the Test Resource Management Center, which reports directly to the Under Secretary for Defense for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics, to lead a new multi-university research effort. The three-year, $3.8-million project will focus on developing a decision support system to improve the effectiveness of testing unmanned and autonomous systems of systems (UAS) such as the Army Brigade Combat Team Modernization program, formerly known as the Future Combat Systems.

MIT will lead the project, which includes computer scientists from the University of Southern California and systems engineers from the University of Texas at Arlington. The project will involve Department of Defense (DoD) partners who will ultimately adopt and apply the research results along with systems developers and testers from the Army Operational Test Command (USAOTC), Navy Unmanned Combat Aerial System (N-UCAS) program, and Air Force Operational Test & Evaluation Center (AFOTEC).

“This is a very exciting project that has important implications for complex systems because we are working at the intersection of autonomy and systems of systems,” says LAI researcher and project lead Dr. Ricardo Valerdi. “Our multi-university team will be constructing models to analyze and improve UAS decision operations in complex and uncertain environments in space, air, land, sea, and undersea.” He adds, “This new team brings expertise in test and evaluation, systems engineering, software engineering, robotics, and modeling.”

LAI Director Prof. Deborah Nightingale explains, “LAI offers 15 years of research and a rich background in complex enterprise issues. We are very interested in integrating the acquisition and front-end development enterprises with the test and evaluation enterprise. It is exciting to help the DoD integrate all phases of the system life cycle.”

Filiberto Macias, DoD project manager for the Unmanned and Autonomous Systems Test effort, explains, “We have put together a very strong team that will help us address our need to develop new processes and methods for designing and executing tests for systems of systems in a joint mission environment. This work is a critical investment that will enable the development of a common approach to assessing systems performance as it pertains to capabilities supporting joint missions.”

LAI is a unique research consortium that provides a neutral forum for sharing enterprise transformation research findings, lessons learned, and best practices. LAI, along with its international Educational Network (EdNet), offers its members from industry, government, and academia the newest and best thinking, products, and tools related to enterprise transformation.