The utilization of virtual reality as a system of systems research tool

© 2018 IEEE. Virtual reality (VR) has become a very popular gaming platform in recent years, but has not been used as much in the research domain. Several technologies used to create virtual environments can also be used to assist in research. For example, recent developments in VR allow for easier integration of humans in the loop for control and manipulation of complex, multi-modal system of systems. In this paper we show some of the methods in which a virtually emulated system can be integrated into an artificial intelligence (AI) based system of systems. We demonstrate how this integration allows the reseacher to more easily understand and analyse the inter-system dynamics, and to improve performance using post-simulation visualization, real-time simulation interaction, hardware emulation, and physical object tracking. The results of using virtual reality as a simulation environment shows the usefulness of the tool to system of systems researchers.