Use of value function in decision making for selection of unmanned aircraft conceptual design

Аuthors

Golubev S. I.

Moscow representative office of Briggs&Stratton AG, 17, Vereiskaya Str., Moscow, 121357, Russia

e-mail: s-golubev@yandex.ru

Abstract

The article suggests use of utility function theory for assessment and decision making in the process of best conceptual design selection of the aircraft of the military- industrial complex (MIC). The utility function allows combining of manufactures and consumers approaches within the process of new technics development and in the same time solves task of the best alternative selection among considered projects. For manufacture the utility is a mean to assess the degree of the product being attractive to consumers and for potential customer utility is a tool to sel ect best alternative among considered.
The usefulness of an alternative for the consumer may be achieved with some probability (stochastic case). If selection of the alternative brings certain utility with certainty it is considered deterministic case. The first case in the literature is referred as theory of utility function, the second as theory of value function. In our analysis we concentrated on deterministic case.
Presented theory of cardinal value function gives the framework to form the set of criteria describing alternatives of conceptual design. The cardinal feature of the value function makes it possible to determine not !«only order of the alternatives but also how far one alternatives stands from one another in terms of utility. This property allows use of the results of the decision making process in investments decisions. One can form the order of the alternatives having their utilities and dividing them by investment needed for the project. Such order shows amount of utility fr om the project per capital invested.
The axioms are given, on which existence of cardinal value function is based. Key definitions and theorem to support forming additive multi-attribute cardinal value function have been outlined.
The task of designing of the technical system consists of two parts — generation of the alternatives and selection best alternative. In the example it is considered that the first part of the designing process is solved and it is considered multi-attribute decision making problem of selection of the best alternative. The example demonstrates use of the cardinal value function theory for selection of the conceptual project of the surface to air missile (SAM) among alternatives that have different competitive advantages. The major design objective is to select the design of the missile that destroys given types of targets better than the other projects. The value function has been built based on three criteria that characterize project of SAM: the targeted efficacy, time to capture, and initial mass. The method does not have limitation on number of criteria to include in the value function. In order to support possibility of building additive value function, it is briefly discussed difference independence of the mentioned three criteria. The process of obtaining single attribute value functions has been omitted due to technical nature of the process putting together experts opinions on attitude to desirable and non-desirable particular values of selected criteria.
The suggested method can be used in the automatic decision making systems as the assessments on conceptual design can be obtained «on the fly» as soon as values of the selected criteria become available.

Keywords:

multi-attribute value function, utility, conditions for the existence of the additive value function, conceptual design

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