Development of Descriptive Methods for verification and validation testing of associate systems

Associate systems, as complex integrated human-machine systems, pose difficult problems for verification and validation testing. Traditional emphases on analysis or statistical hypothesis testing are not powerful enough to effectively test such systems. The most promising approaches to verificaton and validation testing or associate systems are descriptive methods using interpretive analysis. These appoarches are methodologically immature, creating a major obstacle to their exploitation. This innovative research proposal will develop descriptive methods for verifiaciton and validation testing using the Pilot's Associate as an example system. The anticipated result will be a preliminary design for a software tool to conduct efficient and repeatable interpretive analysis of associate systems.