We have teamed up with Autonomy Research Center for STEAHM (ARCS) at California State University Northridge as the Research Institution (RI), and Dr. Li Liu as the Principal Investigator. Together we are working on the Coordination and Control of Swarms of Space Vehicles as part of our Hierarchical State Machine Visualization in a Multi-Robot System as our NASA STTR 2020 Phase I contract.
PROPOSAL NUMBER: 20-1- T4.03-6408
Technical Abstract
Swarms of space vehicles rely on cooperative operations to perform scheduled tasks. This project proposes to improve the design process and operation control of a multi-agent system by using Hierarchical state machines (HSMs). The research will look into theoretical frameworks and methods to visualize HSMs dynamics representing the behavior of a multi-agent system. How an interactive user interface can help engineers and ground operators to predict how each robot and the system will behave in future situations. A prototype of software simulation will be built to demonstrate feasibility at TRL 2.
Potential NASA Applications
Control Architecture for Robotic Agent Command and Sensing (CARACaS)
Autonomous Pop-Up Flat-Folding Explorer Robot (A-PUFFER)
Potential Non-NASA Applications
In the future of Autonomous Mobility, the offerors see that programming will shift focus beyond the independent-mover and into a swarm ecosystem framework.
The innovations proposed in this STTR will play a crucial role in this ecosystem development as human-machine teaming will be integrated within each swarm component as well as on a systematic control level.