Architecture for an autonomous reconfigurable intelligent control system (ARICS)

ARICS is an embedded autonomous mission controller (AMC), designed to be used onboard highly autonomous vehicles (AV). It is designed to meet the requirements for extended autonomous capabilities. Such capabilities are required by long range, long endurance AVs, such as autonomous underwater vehicles-AUVs. Although the architecture is kept as generic and common as possible, the specific functional processing modules (FPMs) may be different for various vehicles and applications. ARICS is designed to provide the AUV with the following onboard, real-time, self-contained capabilities: a) Goal-directed and event-driven reactive mission and system management; b) Plan updating, adjusting, or replanning; c) Complete in-mission, on-the-move, planning; d) Context-sensitive and event-driven exception handling; e) Fault management, error recovery, and module/functionality reconfiguration; f) Coordinating the AUV's cooperative operation with other AUVs, when operating in cooperative mode; g) Optimal resource management. This paper describes the architecture of ARICS, the architecture of the Mission Manager, the architecture of the main FPMs, the data flow between the processes, as well as, design principles and implementation issues.