Using Formal Methods and Agent-Oriented Software Engineering for Modeling NASA Swarm-Based Systems

Author

Rouff, Christopher A. ; Hinchey, M.G. ; Pena, Joaquin ; Ruiz-Cortes, Antonoio

Author_Institution

Adv. Technol. & Solutions Bus. Unit, SAIC, McLean, VA

fYear

2007

fDate

1-5 April 2007

Firstpage

348

Lastpage

355

Abstract

NASA is conducting research on advanced technologies for future exploration using intelligent swarms of robotic vehicles. One of these missions is the Autonomous Nano Technology Swarm (ANTS) mission that will explore the asteroid belt using 1,000 cooperative autonomous spacecraft. From an engineering point of view, the complexity and emergent behavior of this kind of system is one of the main challenges that has to be overcome, since it makes the behavior of the swarm unpredictable. In NASA, many approaches are being explored towards this goal, mainly, a tailored software engineering approach, called agent-oriented software engineering, and formal methods. In this paper, we report on the main advances we have made towards modeling, implementing, and testing NASA swarms-based concept missions

Keywords

aerospace computing; aerospace control; control engineering computing; cooperative systems; formal verification; mobile robots; multi-robot systems; software agents; space vehicles; Autonomous Nano Technology Swarm mission; NASA swarm-based systems; agent-oriented software engineering; cooperative autonomous spacecraft; formal methods; intelligent swarms; robotic vehicles; Belts; Intelligent robots; Intelligent vehicles; NASA; Orbital robotics; Particle swarm optimization; Remotely operated vehicles; Software engineering; Space technology; Space vehicles;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Swarm Intelligence Symposium, 2007. SIS 2007. IEEE

Conference_Location

Honolulu, HI

Print_ISBN

1-4244-0708-7

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/SIS.2007.367958

Filename

4223195