Future Operational Ecosystems
Beyond Individual Systems and Mission Silos
The long-term evolution of distributed autonomous systems extends well beyond vehicles.
Future operational ecosystems will combine autonomous platforms, fixed infrastructure, software agents and human participants into integrated distributed operational systems capable of adapting continuously to changing conditions while maintaining operational continuity. But that is not all the story.
Today’s distributed systems remain isolated from one another, neatly confined into the silo defined by their mission. Tomorrow, these systems will no longer exist independently.
The Next Layer
Future operational environments will consist of autonomous systems continuously working together, discovering, joining and leaving swarms as operational needs evolve.
For example, a drone arriving over an industrial site will not encounter an empty environment, but an existing ecosystem. It will immediately discover existing sensors, autonomous vehicles, fixed infrastructure, software services and nearby human operators. Without prior low-granularity instruction, it will discover and become a participant in an operational capability larger than itself.
The ecosystem as a whole will provide the persistent substrate upon which the capabilities of individual platforms can be leveraged. In that sense, individual capabilities will become shared resources that can assembled dynamically within the ecosystem itself in service of a system-level operational outcome.
Fluid Organizational Boundaries
The boundaries between organizations (military forces, industrial facilities, logistics organizations, critical infrastructure operators) will progressively become more permeable.
Rather than operating independently, they will increasingly cooperate through shared operational ecosystems while preserving authority, ownership and mission objectives.
The mechanisms allowing heterogeneous systems to discover one another, establish trust, exchange capabilities and cooperate will instead become a new type of infrastructure bridging across multiple activity domains, defined by criteria of connectivity, maintainability and resilience.
Dorylid Systems’ Perspective
We believe the technologies developed today for resilient distributed operations represent only the first generation of this transformation.
The long-term objective is not to create increasingly capable autonomous platforms.
It is to provide the architectural foundations upon which future operational ecosystems can emerge naturally, regardless of domain, operator or mission.