SBIR-STTR Award

This proposal addresses the need for solutions that enable higher levels of spacecraft autonomy to reliably maintain operational capabilities. Random hardware faults and hostile threats necessitate autonomous systems capable of responding quickly and effectively to these threats and unexpected events. The proposed research will develop an autonomy software architecture that enables evolutionary onboard capabilities with initial focus on Fault Management. DoD missions will benefit from robust, reliable autonomous capability in support of the warfighter. Onboard autonomy will be crucial to mission success particularly during critical times where the situation changes rapidly and unpredictably with no opportunity for operator support.

Benefit:
The need for the proposed capabilities is emerging, and will increase dramatically as autonomous systems begin to diffuse into operational systems over the next several years. DoD?s drive to a Blue Force situational awareness has already pushed it into exploration of autonomy-enabling architectures which will only increase as spacecraft autonomy moves into the broader spacecraft industry. The DoD?s need for robust, reliable spacecraft autonomy will be especially great due to the variety and complexity of DoD missions. The evolutionary approach to autonomy will be applicable to near-term missions as well as more complex future missions requiring higher levels of onboard autonomy. The capability, with tailoring, will be applicable to a broad set of modularity implementations, and could find applications today with AFRL?s smart technologies development. It could be used for virtually any system requiring onboard autonomy and would thus potentially cover the entire range of mission types from small to large, near-Earth to interplanetary, experimental, science, military, and commercial.

Keywords:
Spacecraft Autonomy,Fault Manangement, Model-Based Systems Engineering, State Analysis, Model-Based Reasoners, Intelligent Agent, Command And Control, Progress

The Model-based Off-Nominal State Identification and Detection (MONSID) FM system addresses the need for cost-effective solutions that enable higher levels of onboard spacecraft autonomy to reliably maintain operational capabilities. The system will provide onboard off-nominal state detection and isolation capabilities that are key components to assessing spacecraft state awareness. The ability to autonomously isolate spacecraft failures to component levels will enable faster recovery thereby reducing down time. The MONSID system is a relatively compact software package because it relies only on modeling nominal behavior; fault models are not needed. Thus, this approach has the capability to detect off-nominal behavior including un-modeled faults. Health information produced by the FM system can be used to make resource allocation and planning and scheduling decisions by ground operations or by other on-board autonomy agents. The system can be built and tested standalone potentially reducing FM developmental and testing costs. The FM system provides an evolutionary approach to full onboard autonomy as it can first be implemented and tested in ground-based systems and then migrated onboard spacecraft. The MONSID system will be fielded in an AFRL test environment designed to integrate and evaluate spacecraft autonomy enabling technologies. Onboard fault management is crucial to NASA mission