## 3 System Design
### System Requirements  
The CODE BAA [3] identified four top-level goals for any system proposed and developed:  
1. develop and demonstrate the value of collaborative autonomy in a tactical context;
2. rapidly transition the capability to the warfighter;
3. develop an enduring framework to expand the range of missions, platforms, and capabilities that can leverage collaborative autonomy; and
4. develop an open architecture that enables all members of the rich community of unmanned systems and autonomy researchers to contribute to current and future capabilities. Similarly, the DBM BAA [4] identified a goal of adaptive planning and control that could be distributed across systems to aid a variety of vehicles, weapons, and sensors. The goal is to enable UASs to satisfy the commander's intent while operating in normal or limited communication environments. The ability to have an adaptive decision process across mission types is critical. Hierarchical task processing under limited communication will be an important enabler of autonomy. The autonomous capabilities should be vehicle agnostic. The UASs should be able to negotiate both high-level battle manager tasks and low-level tactical tasks. The capability will need to exist to execute cooperative tasks with other UASs and manned vehicles. Seven key performance objectives were identified in the CODE BAA where significant improvements are sought and would be critical for any system also developed for the DBM BAA or any other project. Six of the objectives are discussed below. The seventh objective, transition-ability is not considered in this review. 1. Mission Efficiency: Mission efficiency is an important requirement for both military and civilian operations. The cost of completing the mission needs to be considered. The expense of flying the vehicle along with the duration required to complete the mission are critical concerns for all parties involved. Additionally, the ability to quickly react to changes in mission requirements or system functionality is critical for robust systems of the future. The bulk of the review of current capabilities in existing systems will relate to mission efficiency and control of the system. Mission efficiency can be considered in countless manners, including time to complete the mission (time efficiency), fuel used to complete the mission (fuel efficiency), endurance of mission (endurance), and total number of tasks completed (task efficiency). 2. Communication requirements: Limited communication frequencies will be available in the future. Limited bandwidth and minimization of communication will be required in future operations and will be a feature for more autonomous vehicles. Additionally, communication in a denied electronic environment will necessitate limited communications. The ability to have communications in unique environments with cognitive capabilities will be required in the future [13]. 3. Manning: Currently, the ratio of operators to vehicles is many-to-one but in the future the desire is to flip the ratio to be one-to-many. To support this change in operational manning, a significant increase in system autonomy must be created. A system must be able to automate its mission path and plan with minimal operator inputs. Hierarchical logic for decision making must be implemented to ensure the most effective completion of the mission and rapid response to mission or system changes. The system must be able to react to both external inputs (operator) and internal inputs(system and sensor data). Additionally, unique challenges of training and educating future operators will be critical [14]. The review of current capabilities of algorithms and autonomous features as it relates to mission efficiency will incorporate the considerations of reduction in manning of operations. 4. Command Station: Future command stations must be robust and provide significant situational awareness for the operator. Being able to command vehicles from a mobile or fixed-based control station will be necessary to ensure flexibility in capabilities.