Expert-Informed Autonomous Science Planning for In-situ Observations and Discoveries

We propose to design, develop, and demonstrate an autonomy architecture that consists of three main components: Shared Science Value Maps (SSVM), which function as an interface between REASON (Robust Exploration with Autonomous Science on-board) - the on-board autonomous component - and RECOURSE (Ranked Evaluation of Contingent Opportunities for Uninterrupted Remote Science Exploration) - the ground-based scientist driven system - using for efficient and useful scientific communication between scientists and robot. The key advantage to this design is in its ability to continuously operate and adapt despite the constraints of high-latency, low-bandwith communications and an uncertain environment which today would require ground-in-the-loop operations.We will focus on near-term feasibility with a path for future extension to include more advanced methods on-board if improved computation becomes available. We believe this approach has many advantages, not the least of which is designing and implementing the system in such a way as to keep scientists in the loop (albeit asynchronously and less directly) to both take advantage of their expertise and to give the scientists confidence that the system will perform well and acquire good scientific data. This two-year effort will produce a near-term feasible architecture for expert-informed autonomous robotic science operations. The system design is focused on enabling scientists to guide asynchronous adaptation without interrupting "fail operational'' science activities in order to maximize science value returned to Earth under realistic mission constraints with built-in assurances. The team at CU has experience in planetary exploration missions from science and engineering perspectives, in spacecraft systems, as well as with many terrestrial robotic applications. We believe this combination of expertise uniquely situates us to successfully address the problem at hand through this proposed effort. Our work will be incorporated with NASA's Virtual Ocean Worlds Autonomy Testbed. This proposal will respond directly to the COLDTech call for the Autonomy for Landed Operations technical area.

Developing Instrument or spacecraft technology to improve measurements for future planetary science missions

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.