Architecture for Integrated System Health Management, Phase I

Managing the health of vehicle, crew, and habitat systems is a primary function of flight controllers today. We propose to develop an architecture for automating many of the response actions in problem situations and coordinating these actions with human response activities. Our approach is to develop a basic module that automates (1) Planning what response actions to take, (2) Executing these planned actions, and (3) Monitoring the effects of these actions to ensure they are successful. These modules will be organized into layers, operating at different levels of abstraction and with different time constants and time horizons. The architecture will support both hierarchical coordination between layers of control and peer-to-peer interaction among modules within a layer. This proposal is innovative in combining centralized planning for hierarchical coordination with distributed negotiation techniques for peer-to-peer coordination to provide flexible contingency response. The successful completion of a Phase II project will deliver a system health management architecture to NASA that improves system safety and makes more effective use of human time and capabilities when problems occur.

Potential NASA Commercial Applications: Commercial products for managing failures focus on alerting limit violations and diagnosing root cause of problems, leaving problem response to human operators. By automating aspects of problem response and supporting coordination of these actions with human response, the software developed under Phase II of the proposed project is targeted toward a commercial market with few competitors. Potential markets for this software include industries where timely problem detection and response is essential to the safety of personnel and the productivity of the plant. Example applications where these criteria are important include chemical process plants, the nuclear industry, and control of naval ships and submarines.

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.