Title: Digital collaborators for complex systems development: a research agenda

Authors: Philip Barry; Steven Doskey; Holly Handley; Andreas Tolk; Sanith Wijesinghe

Addresses: Systems Engineering & Operations Research, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA 22030, USA ' The MITRE Corporation, McLean, VA, 22102, USA ' Engineering Management & Systems Engineering, Old Dominion University, Norfolk, VA, 23529, USA ' The MITRE Corporation, Charlottesville, VA, 22911, USA ' The MITRE Corporation, McLean, VA, 22102, USA

Abstract: Increasingly complex systems exist in dynamic environments where the system needs to evolve in ways that are faster than it is possible to identify, much less comprehend, through human observation alone. To build such complex systems, system engineering teams should be augmented with real-time digital collaborators, not only in the design process, but in the management of the system itself. These digital collaborators will likely aid engineering managers by providing risk-based alternatives, identifying hidden risks, and exposing hidden patterns in the human behaviour of stakeholders. However, there are fundamental research questions that must be addressed for industry to employ digital collaborators. Resolving these questions can enable the evolution of today's current development paradigms to a future where Artificial Intelligence and humans seamlessly work as partners in developing new systems. These questions are codified into a research agenda to aid academia and industry in prioritising initiatives that can help accelerate advancement of digital collaborators in the engineering of systems.

Keywords: adaptive systems; artificial intelligence; collective intelligence; complex systems; intelligent systems; multi-agent intelligence; sociotechnical systems; systems engineering.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSSE.2022.124974

International Journal of System of Systems Engineering, 2022 Vol.12 No.2, pp.103 - 113

Received: 29 Apr 2021
Accepted: 28 Jun 2021
Published online: 19 Aug 2022 *

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