Integration Framework for Building Autonomous Intelligent Systems

Among the many challenges of Mars exploration is the creation of autonomous systems that support crew activities without reliance on Earth mission control. These intelligent autonomous systems will have different levels of autonomy and will be designed to effectively communicate with the crew. These autonomous systems will be transparent (able to explain what they are doing) in order for crew members to trust them. It remains still a challenge to build highly intelligent, collaborative and transparent autonomous systems. With the existence of so many algorithms, knowledge representation techniques, and autonomous agents architectures, it is desirable to have a general integration architecture that allows the quickly evaluation of proposed software modules facilitating in turn the evaluation of diverse software configurations. We propose the development of an autonomous agents integration architecture for the definition of goal directed agents exhibiting transparent task execution behavior. The architecture has as goals to (i) facilitate the integration of existing algorithms and systems employed by most autonomous agents architectures, (ii) define how these modules interact and the ontology used to communicate data between these modules, (iii) provide default implementations for the four basic modules in the architecture (goal manager, planner, diagnosis, task executor), and (iv) provide insight on how to build transparent autonomous agents that can effectively communicate with the crew (e.g., explain the rationale behind key decisions during a task execution). During Phase I we will show the utility and feasibility of the integration architecture by (i) developing operational CONOPs describing envisioned tasks done by autonomous agents, (ii) identifying specific technologies that will be integrated during Phase II, and (iii) developing a software prototype illustrating the agents capabilities in scenarios of interest to NASA.

These technologies will increase the ability for crew members to oversee the operations of teams of robots during lunar and Martian missions and, in the nearer term, during analog experiments on Earth. Other NASA applications include the development of intelligent user interfaces for the management of mission operations including problem resolution in the spacecraft, base and science data gathering operations, payload operations, and preventive maintenance and housekeeping activities.

The resulting technologies will help Department of Defense personnel evaluate the progress of plan executions by autonomous vehicles and by military forces, compare actual and planned events, and identify possible problem causes and downstream effects. With the DoD-wide development of autonomous unmanned vehicles for land, air or sea operations, future adaptive intelligent interfaces will be needed to support new operator requirements as workloads change from many operators controlling one UV to one operator controlling many UVs (ideally a 1:4 ratio).

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