Interesting SenSIP seminar featuring associate professor from CIDSE (John and Erik’s alma mater). An interdisciplinary perspective that hopefully continues. Notice application of formal requirements using S-TaLiRo (System’s TemporAl LogIc Robustness).

Here is the reality. The world in motion around us is no longer about a better sensor, algorithm, data or thing. Those are commodities. The key to the future is how well you can assemble those “things” into systems that serve a larger purpose. BTW: knowledge base and expertise in “things” is a necessary prerequisite.

Consider the following exemplars from recent proposals:

  • SBIR NGA101-001, Unsupervised Techniques for SAR Imagery – Technology Areas: Battlespace, Human Systems, Info Systems, Sensors. Delighted to see our proposal contains the word “system” 46 times.
  • SBIR AF19A-T010, Virtual Reality for Multi-INT Deep Learning (VR-MDL) 10 instances of “system” in ½ page topic description. Over 100 “system” mentions in the proposal.
  • RIF 19. STTE2..a complex Systems Approach to Space Threat Test & Evaluation. 25 references to “systems” in one page topic description. This topic wasn’t about testing or M&S. It’s about Cyber-Physical Systems.
  • GPA – Our beloved IDIQ. Base and TO#2 SOWs has 70 instances of “system” in 58 pages. OK, the same pages have 120 instances of “application” but the Watson Natural Language Processing algorithm should tell us this SOW is about “application systems.”

At any rate, hope I’ve made a point or demonstrated my passion (at least). We aren’t building things (and haven’t done so for some time). We are integrating things into systems that perform useful functions.