An Integrated Decision-making Method to Identify Design Requirements Through Agent-based Simulation for Personal Air Vehicle System

Abstract

A product?s design requirements guide the next development efforts. Thus, correct decision-making is critical in generating design requirements as vehicle concepts are being formulated. A new method is proposed to account for system-of-systems aspects and to aid a decision-making process in synthesizing design requirements for a personal air vehicle system. The use of an agent-based modeling technique facilitates the abstraction of the key elements in the whole system. A traveling party is treated as an agent, and the infrastructure environment in the national transportation system is easily represented in the model. A number of simulations are performed to demonstrate the capability of this new approach. The method not only measures the effect of design requirements of a personal air vehicle system through sensitivity analyses, but also evaluates the effect of system technologies quantitatively, while maintaining the system-of-systems perspective. With this powerful method, designers can extract essential technical requirements that allow polishing of concept vehicles; policy makers can investigate the infrastructure and technology impact of new systems; and business planners can perform an analysis based on their own market assumptions.