Swarm intelligence, a Blackboard architecture and local decision making for spacecraft command

Control of a multi-spacecraft constellation is a topic of significant inquiry, at present. This paper presents and evaluates a command architecture for a multi-spacecraft mission. It combines swarm techniques with a decentralized / local decision making architecture (which uses a set of shared blackboards for coordination) and demonstrates the efficacy of this approach. Under this approach, the Blackboard software architecture is used to facilitate data sharing between craft as part of a resilient hierarchy and the swarm techniques are used to coordinate activity. The paper begins with an overview of prior work on the precursor command technologies and then presents five command architectures for comparison purposes. Then, it presents a qualitative analysis of these techniques, followed by a quantitative analysis which characterizes the constellation's performance across a variety of prospective scenarios including normal operations, several mission scenarios which limit communications, operations in an intentionally communications-denied environment and operations across a variety of craft failure scenarios. From performance analysis, the utility of the techniques is analyzed.

[1]  Rodrigo Calvo,et al.  Inverse ACO Applied for Exploration and Surveillance in Unknown Environments , 2011 .

[2]  J. Straub.  Integrating Model-Based Transmission Reduction into a multi-tier architecture , 2013, 2013 IEEE Aerospace Conference.

[3]  K. Durga Prasad,et al.  Wireless Sensor Networks – A potential tool to probe for water on Moon , 2011 .

[4]  Wolfgang Fink.  Generic Prioritization Framework for Target Selection and Instrument Usage for Reconnaissance Mission Autonomy , 2006, The 2006 IEEE International Joint Conference on Neural Network Proceedings.

[5]  Jeremy Straub.  A data collection decision-making framework for a multi-tier collaboration of heterogeneous orbital, aerial, and ground craft , 2013, Defense, Security, and Sensing.

[6]  Michael G. Hinchey,et al.  Towards an ASSL specification model for NASA swarm-based exploration missions , 2008, SAC '08.

[7]  Barbara Hayes-Roth,et al.  A Blackboard Architecture for Control , 1985, Artif. Intell..

[8]  Hamed Shah-Hosseini,et al.  Problem solving by intelligent water drops , 2007, 2007 IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation.

[9]  Adrian K. Agogino,et al.  Agent-based resource allocation in dynamically formed CubeSat constellations , 2011, AAMAS.

[10]  Mauro Birattari,et al.  Self-Organizing and Scalable Shape Formation for a Swarm of Pico Satellites , 2008, 2008 NASA/ESA Conference on Adaptive Hardware and Systems.

[11]  Roberto Furfaro,et al.  Robotic test bed for autonomous surface exploration of Titan, Mars, and other planetary bodies , 2011, 2011 Aerospace Conference.

[12]  Jeremy Straub.  Reducing Link Budget Requirements with Model-Based Transmission Reduction Techniques , 2012 .

[13]  Frank Kirchner,et al.  A Concept of a Reliable Three-Layer Behaviour Control System for Cooperative Autonomous Robots , 2012 .

[14]  Marco Dorigo,et al.  Supervised morphogenesis: morphology control of ground-based self-assembling robots by aerial robots , 2012, AAMAS.

[15]  Martin Sweeting,et al.  Emergency response networks for disaster monitoring and detection from space , 2009, Defense + Commercial Sensing.

[16]  Richard Tynan,et al.  Autonomic wireless sensor networks , 2004, Eng. Appl. Artif. Intell..

[17]  Derek James Bennet,et al.  Low-cost, multi-agent systems for planetary surface exploration , 2012 .

[18]  Jeremy Straub.  Command of a multi-tier robotic network with local decision-making capabilities , 2014 .

[19]  Jeremy Straub.  Multi-Tier Exploration: An Architecture for Dramatically Increasing Mission ROI , 2012 .

[20]  Joseph Schlecht,et al.  Decentralized Search by Unmanned Air Vehicles Using Local Communication , 2003, IC-AI.

[21]  Mark A. Tarbell,et al.  Tier-scalable reconnaissance: the challenge of sensor optimization, sensor deployment, sensor fusion, and sensor interoperability , 2007, SPIE Defense + Commercial Sensing.

[22]  Eunjin Kim,et al.  Characterization of Extended and Simplified Intelligent Water Drop (SIWD) Approaches and Their Comparison to the Intelligent Water Drop (IWD) Approach , 2013, 2013 IEEE 25th International Conference on Tools with Artificial Intelligence.

[23]  Jeremy Straub.  Multi-Tier Exploration Concept Demonstration Mission , 2012 .

[24]  Kendall E. Nygard,et al.  POMDP Planning for High Level UAV Decisions: Search vs. Strike , 2003, CAINE.

[25]  D. Schulze-Makuch,et al.  Tier-Scalable Reconnaissance Missions For The Autonomous Exploration Of Planetary Bodies , 2007, 2007 IEEE Aerospace Conference.

[26]  Kendall E. Nygard,et al.  Synchronized multi-point attack by autonomous reactive vehicles with simple local communication , 2003, Proceedings of the 2003 IEEE Swarm Intelligence Symposium. SIS'03 (Cat. No.03EX706).