Tasking system capabilities modeling using the complexity profile

Abstract

The present defence and security environment has been increasingly recognized to be represented by complex systems. The complexity profile is a method for characterizing the complexity of a system. According to a modified version of Ashbys Law of Requisite Variety, a system designed to perform a complex task should have a complexity profile that matches the complexity profile of the task. This modified version of Ashbys Law is called the Law of Requisite Multiscale Variety (Bar-Yam, “Multiscale Complexity/Entropy”, Advances in Complex Systems, vol. 7, 2004). Thus far there have not been quantitative characterizations of real systems in the scientific literature that illustrate the application of this law. In this paper we illustrate how the Law of Requisite Multiscale Variety can be applied to a simple robot tasking problem so that the viability of the task the robots undertake can be determined solely by complexity arguments, and not by extensive simulation or live experimentation. The system was chosen for its simplicity in illustration of the method and its generality of representing a broad class of problems.