Autonomic Systems

Abstract

AbstractNASA requires many of its future missions (spacecraft, rovers, constellations/ swarms of spacecraft, etc.) to possess greater capabilities to operate on their own with minimal human intervention or guidance [180, 181, 182]. Autonomy essentially describes independent activity toward goal achievement, but space-system autonomy alone is not sufficient to satisfy the requirement. Autonomicity, the quality that enables a system to handle effects upon its own internal subsystems and their interactions when those effects correspond to risks of damage or impaired function, is the further ingredient of space assets that will become more essential in future advanced space-science and exploration missions. Absent autonomicity, a spacecraft or other asset in a harsh environment, will be vulnerable to many environmental effects: without autonomic responses, the spacecraft’s performance will degrade, or the spacecraft will be unable to recover from faults. Ensuring that exploration spacecraft have autonomic properties will increase the survivability, and therefore, their likelihood of success. In short, as missions increasingly incorporate autonomy (self-governing of their own goals), there is a strong case to be made that this needs to be extended to include autonomicity (mission self-management [160]). This chapter describes the emerging autonomic paradigm, related research, and programmatic initiatives, and highlights technology transfer issues.KeywordsAutonomic SystemAutonomic CommunicationArtificial Intelligence TechniqueAutonomic ComputingAutonomic ManagerThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.