a reactive strongmodelstrong-based programming language for robotic space.pdfVIP

A Reactive Model-based Programming Language for Robotic Space Explorers Michel Ingham, Robert Ragno, Brian Williams MIT Space Systems Laboratory / Artificial Intelligence Laboratory Cambridge, MA 02139 {ingham, rjr, williams}@mit.edu Keywords model-based autonomy, model-based system monitoring, system reconfiguration, planning programming, execution, synchronous programming, and low-level control. To illustrate this problem, automated reasoning consider the current state-of-the-art in model-based autonomy software, Remote Agent (RA). Flight- Abstract validated on the DS1 spacecraft in 1999, RA is Model-based autonomous agents have emerged re- composed of three primary components: a Plan- cently as vital technologies in the development of ner/Scheduler, a Smart Executive, and a Mode Iden- highly autonomous reactive systems, particularly in tification and Reconfiguration module known as Liv- the aerospace domain. These agents utilize many ingstone. automated reasoning capabilities, but are compli- The complexity of software interfaces was identi- cated to use because of the variety of languages em- fied as a key challenge encountered during the inte- ployed for each capability. To address this problem, gration of the RA and the flight software [4]. Fur- we introduce model-based programming, a novel ap- thermore, each of the three component technolo- proac