Mission Assurance and Risk Mitigation in the Design of Autonomous Systems using Fault Management

Fault Management (FM) is a crucial component for ensuring success in science and human spaceflight programs that have systems designed with built-in autonomy for performing complex goals while lowering operations costs. NASA uses a variety of tools to conduct its FM activities. However, these tools are varied and “silo’ed”, and require manual intervention to transfer data from output of one tool to input of another. This process is tedious, error-prone and scales poorly for large, complex systems. This prevents FM engineers from gaining insight into overall system-level design and characteristics that are the key to transparency, verifiability and efficiency of implementing and testing FM. QSI’s TEAMS® toolset facilitates the creation, evaluation and integration of FM concepts early in the design process so that adequate detection and diagnosis is built into the system design, thereby lowering the total cost of development; enhanced communication and coordination among stakeholders; reduced development risks through improved quality and traceability; and model reusability to reduce operational costs. QSI plans to develop techniques and concomitant software tools to (1) capture diverse data and multi-source FMEA information into TEAMS® for standardizing FM techniques and processes, (2) develop an FMEA exchange tool that can interchange information in various source formats, and import into TEAMS®, (3) output the TEAMS® FMECA reports and Fault Tree Analysis reports in industry standards-compliant format, and (4) support risk engineering studies, link the design trade metrics to overall system autonomy. The solution will be of interest to NASA and industry including aerospace, efficient buildings, offshore oil-and-gas, industrial automation, offshore drilling, remote research stations, shipboard systems, aviation, and space system developers. The target of the technology is also of commercial value to commercial space sectors and contractors/suppliers of NASA systems.

The proposed effort aligns with NASA’s vision to enhance the level of FM in its earth and space missions. It aims at improving the reliability and performance of science and deep-space missions, allowing NASA to better plan and execute future, long-duration missions in space science and exploration that require endurance in such complex systems. The technology is envisioned to be ready to be operated as part of NASA’s next generation Mission Control Technology allowing NASA to utilize the FM and mission satisfiability information for improved mission execution while improving safety, mission success probability and overall operational uptime of space platforms. HelioSwarm has FMEA source documents and vehicle models, and will be the primary transition platform. NASA’s Deep Space Gateway (DSG) and Deep Space Habitat (DSH) are also candidates for the demonstration. The Artemis program, with its Moon-to-Mars mission are strong candidates for demonstrating the detection and recovery related risk to missions. This technology is also applicable to both military and commercial aircraft applications. Use of this technology in science / deep space missions (HelioSwarm, SLS and Gateway systems) will open the next frontier in exploration by providing greater access to deep space environments and better FM that extends mission capabilities. The solution would help the systems engineer integrate vast amount of information that has to be processed in a timely fashion. This will be critical for improving mission and system safety. The technology would reduce the system lifecycle cost and risk across all its phases: development, production, launch, and operations. We envisage the technology to be of significant interest to Government such as in complex and expensive systems on US Air Force/Navy aircraft, surface ships, submarines, modern ground-fighting vehicles, large-scale military systems/SoS such as NORAD, Space Command ground segments, JSF fleet, Navy shipboard platforms, Submarine Commands and ballistic missile defense (BMD) systems, manufacturers of DoD and military’s remotely guided weapons and reconnaissance systems. Commercial and industrial applications include space (e.g., SpaceX), offshore platforms, greenhouse industry, bio-domes, nuclear shelters, extreme weather research stations, manufacturing, transportation (air transport, self-driving vehicles, electric cars), energy (smart grids), agriculture, healthcare, marine environments, consumer products (household robots), commercial spacecraft operators and maintainers.

This is a mature technology (TRL 7+) — the realistic path in is usually NASA's Technology Transfer Program: licensing an existing NASA patent, or a Space Act Agreement to use NASA facilities/expertise directly. NASA also runs a startup licensing program with no upfront fee for companies formed to commercialize a specific NASA technology.

None of these are guaranteed paths for this specific project — TechPort itself doesn't have an "apply" button. Reaching out to the contact(s) above with a specific question is usually the fastest way to find out what's actually open.