Agile Field Test Support for Drone Rescue Missions

Abstract

Performing field testing of drone missions requires the structured definition of field tests that can be adapted to changing environmental conditions. However, traditional field test checklists on paper require the tester to manually adapt tasks to emerging and changing test conditions. Further, the scattered, heterogeneous documentation on (electronic) paper is hard to integrate and validate - once field tests are completed - for test data analysis. Field test managers, testers, and analysts require an agile field test information system that provides capabilities for (i) providing efficient guidance to field testers on tasks adapted to the field test mission state; and (ii) creating structured field test documentation for advanced analysis of results and causes of risky effects. This paper introduces the Agile Field Test (AFT) approach for behavior-driven test specification and derivation of role-specific information systems for agile guidance on and documentation of field test tasks. We evaluated the effectiveness of the AFT approach with a real-world multi-drone water rescue mission. The study results indicate AFT to be effective for representing and validating field test task specifications and the concepts required for field test documentation as a foundation for test result analysis.