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At least 325 records · Page 18

V&V for Autonomy

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V&V↗

Concepts for Distributed Sensing and Collaborative Airspace Autonomy in Advanced Urban Air Mobility

Emerging concepts for advanced urban air mobility envision responsive air transportation capabilities that will safely move people and cargo in locations presently underserved by aviation. Expanding aviation services to these locales, particularly for high-density autonomous flight operations over urban centers, will require advances beyond the state-of-the-art techniques for airborne sensing. The emerging field of distributed sensing and ‘smart spaces’ – where sensing, processing, communication, and actuation are embedded in the environment in which agents are acting – may provide attractive alternatives over traditional aviation solutions. This paper outlines the challenges and opportunities for distributed sensing and smart space concepts to meet the emerging needs of advanced urban operations in the national airspace. We present an overview of distributed sensing concepts and research currently being investigated under this endeavor.

Distributed sensing↗

Human-Autonomy Teaming

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human-autonomy teaming↗

Crew Autonomy Through Self-Scheduling: Guidelines for Crew Scheduling Performance Envelope and Mitigation Strategies

NASA’s future long duration exploration missions (LDEMs) will encounter increasing communication transmission delays as they move farther from Earth-based ground stations. Because crews can no longer rely on real-time support from ground planners, they will have to self-schedule their own operational timelines effectively and efficiently. To enable this, our team develops Playbook, a mission planning and scheduling tool. Our research focuses on quantifying scheduling performance using Playbook to inform the design and development of future features aimed at streamlining timeline creation. We also aim to propose standards and guidelines for autonomous crews in LDEMs. This year, we discuss preliminary results from HERA Campaign 6.

self-scheduling↗

Preliminary Application of Formal Verification to An Autonomy Architecture for Unmanned Aircraft

There is a desire to design autonomous systems in such a way that capabilities can be easily added or re- combined to produce new behaviors while preserving their safety properties. ICAROUS, a prototype software architecture for building safety-centric autonomous unmanned aircraft applications, is designed to support this type of extensibility and re-configurability. In ICAROUS, core capabilities are implemented as individual soft- ware services, so that enabling access to new capabilities simply requires adding new services. To make use of these capabilities, ICAROUS includes a specialized service that provides a general framework for config- uring the relative priorities, conditions, and rules that govern how different modules should be engaged and disengaged during flight. The inherent complexity of coordinating multiple modules under changing conditions makes it difficult to determine whether a particular configuration could have erroneous behaviors in certain circumstances. A robust set of integration tests can help discover errors, but testing can only realistically cover a relatively small proportion of total system behaviors. Developing good tests and interpreting the results to pinpoint the cause of errors when they arise can also be very time-consuming. To supplement testing, formal methods can be used to model and analyze complex systems, achieving better coverage and simplifying the process of finding, understanding, and fixing errors. To demonstrate these benefits, this paper explores the ap- plication of formal methods to ICAROUS. In particular, the Spin model checker is used to specify requirements for and model portions of the system, then verify whether the model satisfies the requirements and find and fix errors when it does not.

Formal Methods↗

Preliminary Application of Formal Verification to An Autonomy Architecture for Unmanned Aircraft

There is a desire to design autonomous systems in such a way that capabilities can be easily added or re-combined to produce new behaviors while preserving their safety properties. ICAROUS, a prototype software architecture for building safety-centric autonomous unmanned aircraft applications, is designed to support this type of extensibility and re-configurability. In ICAROUS, core capabilities are implemented as individual soft- ware services, so that enabling access to new capabilities simply requires adding new services. To make use of these capabilities, ICAROUS includes a specialized service that provides a general framework for config- uring the relative priorities, conditions, and rules that govern how different modules should be engaged and disengaged during flight. The inherent complexity of coordinating multiple modules under changing conditions makes it difficult to determine whether a particular configuration could have erroneous behaviors in certain circumstances. A robust set of integration tests can help discover errors, but testing can only realistically cover a relatively small proportion of total system behaviors. Developing good tests and interpreting the results to pinpoint the cause of errors when they arise can also be very time-consuming. To supplement testing, formal methods can be used to model and analyze complex systems, achieving better coverage and simplifying the process of finding, understanding, and fixing errors. To demonstrate these benefits, this paper explores the ap- plication of formal methods to ICAROUS. In particular, the Spin model checker is used to specify requirements for and model portions of the system, then verify whether the model satisfies the requirements and find and fix errors when it does not.

Formal Methods↗

Cognitive Engine One: A Cross-Layer Framework for Autonomy in Multi-Provider Space Communications Environments

Spacecraft information needs, along with the communications environments in which data transfers occur, are becoming increasingly dynamic. Earth orbit is served by dozens of ground station and relay satellite providers – each with unique protocols and service capabilities. In this context, we present a system to automate end-to-end space communications across the protocol stack for each of several providers. The proposed system schedules contacts with providers, configures point-to-point RF links, and ensures data is transferred to its destination. Data monitoring and rescheduling provide an automated failover capability in the event of unsuccessful contacts. We verify system performance in a high-fidelity emulation testbed. Results from several scenarios demonstrate favorable system performance across a variety of mission use cases.

space communications↗

Sensor data autonomy

'Smart' sensors onboard NASA space missions will require variable data output bandwidth as they respond to phenomena of interest. An Instrument Telemetry Packet (ITP) approach has been developed which encodes experimental instrument data into an autonomous data package, along with pertinent engineering parameters and ancillary data (time, position, attitude, etc.). New requirements for onboard concentration and buffering, as well as for end-to-end error control, arise from this approach. Emphasis is placed on packet protocols compatible with the data link standard ADCCP, to enable one set of ground support equipment to readily support instrument development, launch site checkout and mission operations phases.

Greene, E. P.↗