This project will develop an innovative Spacecraft Operational Autonomous Reasoning System (SOARS) as a generic approach to spacecraft autonomy which can be applied to a broad range of satellite designs and functions. The project will develop both a generic architecture for spacecraft autonomy as well as a series of specific implementations for autonomy of the most common and highest payoff spacecraft functions. The architecture provides a general synergistic reasoning and decision making capability which employs the full range of reasoning modalities and decision making strategies. The architecture includes a standardized interface to spacecraft systems and functions, making it adaptable to many spacecraft and payload designs. The architecture provides for human controller intervention as a natural element in the decision making and control process, rather than as an extraordinary and emergency situation. We believe a synergistic approach to reasoning is an effective and robust problem-solving model that allows a system to employ historical, experiential, procedural, structural, and causal knowledge. With proper control, such a system is capable of solving all problems solvable by any of the individual reasoning methodologies. By making spacecraft increasingly automated, human operators can be freed to direct their efforts thereby reducing space operations costs.
Potential Commercial Applications: The creation of SOARS will provide the basis for a whole new way to provide satellite maintenance whose impact will be felt in many different programs. By its very nature, autonomous satellite control is adaptable to systems operating in other environments such as underwater, hostile, and remote. In addition, the flexibility designed into SOARS will provide a natural testbed for new autonomous reasoning efforts currently underway in this country. It is applicable to the development by NASA of remote systems for space station assembly and repair, and to systems for the exploration of the Earth, Moon, Mars, and the other planets; to the research going on in the DoE laboratories for ways to remotely handle hazardous wastes; and to the research being conducted in remotely piloted vehicles used for long range surveillance and weapon delivery.
