Toolset for Construction and Verification of Rules for Spacecraft's Autonomous Decision Making

Abstract

Dependability of control system is one of the most complex problems in space projects. Decision making in case of contingencies is a non-trivial process requiring some “intelligence”. We can implement the “onboard intelligence” in different ways. The most common approach involves its implementation in the source code of the flight control software. The approach presented in the paper uses an onboard real-time decision making system. The decision making rules can be added or updated from Earth by radio channel. Currently, the rules should be specified in a table form, leading to misunderstandings in project team and errors. The improved approach provides the special toolset including, visual constructor of rules and support of rules’ verification. The proposed approach allows the engineers to define visually construct and update the decision making rules without programming background easily. The toolset prototype was positively evaluated at enterprise JSC Information Satellite Systems, Russia.