Search NASA⌕ Search

SEARCH · Search NASA

Results for “Autonomous Mitigation”

Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

Quote a phrase for an exact phrase match. Source license links do not imply unrestricted reuse.

At least 109 records · Page 6
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRS1998

Design and implementation of satellite formations and constellations

The direction to develop small low cost spacecraft has led many scientists to recognize the advantage of flying spacecraft in constellations and formations to achieve the correlated instrument measurements formerly possible only by flying many instruments on a single large platform. Yet, constellations and formation flying impose additional complications on orbit selection and orbit maintenance, especially when each spacecraft has its own orbit or science requirements. The purpose of this paper is to develop an operational control method for maintenance of these missions. Examples will be taken from the Earth Observing-1 (EO-1) spacecraft that is part of the New Millennium Program (NMP) and from proposed Earth System Science Program Office (ESSPO) constellations. Results can be used to determine the appropriateness of constellations and formation flying for a particular case as well as the operational impacts. Applications to the ESSPO and NMP are highly considered in analysis and applications. After constellation and formation analysis is completed, implementation of a maneuver maintenance strategy becomes the driver. Advances in technology and automation by GSFC's Guidance, Navigation, and Control Center allow more of the burden of the orbit selection and maneuver maintenance to be automated and ultimately placed onboard the spacecraft, mitigating most of the associated operational concerns. This paper presents the GSFC closed-loop control method to fly in either constellations or formations through the use of an autonomous closed loop three-axis navigation control and innovative orbit maintenance support. Simulation results using AutoCon(TM) and FreeFlyer(TM) with various fidelity levels of modeling and algorithms are presented.

Folta, David↗
NASA NTRS1998

Design and Implementation of Satellite Formations and Constellations

The direction to develop small low cost spacecraft has led many scientists to recognize the advantage of flying spacecraft in constellations and formations to achieve the correlated instrument measurements formerly possible only by flying many instruments on a single large platform. Yet, constellations and formation flying impose additional complications on orbit selection and orbit maintenance, especially when each spacecraft has its own orbit or science requirements. The purpose of this paper is to develop an operational control method for maintenance of these missions. Examples will be taken from the Earth Observing-1 (EO-1) spacecraft that is part of the New Millennium Program (NMP) and from proposed Earth System Science Program Office (ESSPO) constellations. Results can be used to determine the appropriateness of constellations and formation flying for a particular case as well as the operational impacts. Applications to the ESSPO and NMP are highly considered in analysis and applications. After constellation and formation analysis is completed, implementation of a maneuver maintenance strategy becomes the driver. Advances in technology and automation by GSFC's Guidance, Navigation, and Control Center allow more of the burden of the orbit selection and maneuver maintenance to be automated and ultimately placed onboard the spacecraft, mitigating most of the associated operational concerns. This paper presents the GSFC closed-loop control method to fly in either constellations or formations through the use of an autonomous closed loop three-axis navigation control and innovative orbit maintenance support. Simulation results using AutoCon(Trademark) and FreeFlyer(Trademark) with various fidelity levels of modeling and algorithms are presented.

Folta, David↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Human Capabilities Assessments for Autonomous Missions: A Multi-Team Research Effort to Reduce Risk in the Human-System Integration Architecture for Future Deep-Space Missions

In future exploration missions beyond low earth-orbit, crew will have to execute complex operations and respond to off-nominal events, without real-time support from Mission Control. It is anticipated that increased reliance on automated systems, including human-centric vehicle and information architecture, will need to be designed to support the crew; increased risk to performance, health, and safety may occur if these are not implemented appropriately. The Human Factors and Behavioral Performance Element (HFBP) in the NASA Human Research Program supports research to characterize and mitigate such human health and performance risks, including the Risk of Adverse Outcome Due to Inadequate Human Systems Integration Architecture (HSIA). The HSIA risk addresses the integration of onboard capability and the crew roles and responsibilities necessary to enable the crew to respond effectively and efficiently in the increasingly autonomous mission operations environment. In 2017, HFBP released the “Human Capabilities Assessments for Autonomous Missions” (HCAAM) research topic to address HSIA related questions. HCAAM is a major NASA research effort that has assembled a multidisciplinary team from seven institutions to work closely with design and engineering efforts on research towards developing and refining human performance standards, guidelines and automation tools. The scientific focus is on quantitative assessment of human capabilities relevant to future deep-space missions during which earth/spacecraft communication is so delayed and intermittent that the crew must be able to function autonomously. The integrated strategy of the HCAAM project characterizes human capabilities and limitations related to potential performance decrements during long duration exploration mission spaceflight as relevant to both routine and complex task performance; defines system characteristics that reduce the likelihood or impact of potential decrements in human performance capabilities; performs integrated assessment of intelligent system responses within the context of an operational environment with relevant NASA tools, systems, and data structures in order to determine positive or negative interactions and validate recommended approaches; and proposes specific updates to existing standards and guidelines for inclusion in NASA handbooks for the design of future spacecraft intelligent systems that provide crew performance assessment/feedback, and to also serve as decision-support aids for the onboard crew (i.e., NASA-STD-3001, and NASA/SP-Human Integration Design Handbook (HIDH)). The scientific research vectors being addressed by the seven HCAAM teams include: - crew task performance (accuracy, efficiency) (crew + automation) - crew performance (accuracy, efficiency) - crew Situation Awareness - procedure design and multi-modal enhancement - concurrent tasking (mixed manual + some level of autonomy) - task handover - crew self-planning and time-lining - task design - trust in automation, real-time calibration - human multi-sensory feedback and guidance - human trust in on-board software-based intelligent assistants - virtual assistants The presentation will highlight plans and progress made in each of these research areas as well as the methods by which surrogate astronaut crews in the NASA JSC HERA spaceflight analog facility will function as human test subjects for all of the HCAAM research projects.

HCAAM VNSCOR↗
NASA NTRS2001

NASA Alternate Access to Station Service Concept

The evolving nature of the NASA space enterprise compels the agency to develop new and innovative space systems concepts. NASA, working with increasingly strained budgets and a declining manpower base, is attempting to transform from operational activities to procurement of commercial services. NASA's current generation reusable launch vehicle, the Shuttle, is in transition from a government owned and operated entity to a commercial venture to reduce the civil servant necessities for that program. NASA foresees its second generation launch vehicles being designed and operated by industry for commercial and government services. The "service" concept is a pioneering effort by NASA. The purpose the "service" is not only to reduce the civil servant overhead but will free up government resources for further research - and enable industry to develop a space business case so that industry can sustain itself beyond government programs. In addition, NASA desires a decreased responsibility thereby decreasing liability. The Second Generation Reusable Launch Vehicle (RLV) program is implementing NASA's Space Launch Initiative (SLI) to enable industry to develop the launch vehicles of the future. The Alternate Access to Station (AAS) project office within this program is chartered with enabling industry to demonstrate an alternate access capability for the International Space Station (ISS). The project will not accomplish this by traditional government procurement methods, not by integrating the space system within the project office, or by providing the only source of business for the new capability. The project funds will ultimately be used to purchase a service to take re-supply cargo to the ISS, much the same as any business might purchase a service from FedEx to deliver a package to its customer. In the near term, the project will fund risk mitigation efforts for enabling technologies. AAS is in some ways a precursor to the 2nd Generation RLV. By accomplishing ISS resupply with existing technologies, not only will a new category of autonomous vehicles deliver cargo, but a commercial business base will be incubated that will improve the likelihood of commercial convergence with the next generation of RLVs. Traditional paradigms in government management and acquisition philosophy are being challenged in order to bring about the objective of the AAS project. The phased procurement approach is proving to be the most questionable aspect to date. This work addresses the fresh approach AAS is adopting in management and procurement through a study of the AAS history, current solutions, key technologies, procurement complications, and an incremental forward plan leading to the purchase of a service to deliver goods to ISS. Included in this work is a discussion of the Commercial Space Act of 1998 and how it affects government purchase of space launch and space vehicle services. Industry should find these topics pertinent to their current state of business.

Bailey, Michelle D.↗
NASA NTRS2019

Prototyping Operational Autonomy for Space Traffic Management

Current state of the art in Space Traffic Management (STM) relies on a handful of providers for surveillance and collision prediction, and manual coordination between operators. Neither is scalable to support the expected 10x increase in spacecraft population in less than 10 years, nor does it support automated manuever planning. We present a software prototype of an STM architecture based on open Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), drawing on previous work by NASA to develop an architecture for low-altitude Unmanned Aerial System Traffic Management. The STM architecture is designed to provide structure to the interactions between spacecraft operators, various regulatory bodies, and service suppliers, while maintaining flexibility of these interactions and the ability for new market participants to enter easily. Autonomy is an indispensable part of the proposed architecture in enabling efficient data sharing, coordination between STM participants and safe flight operations. Examples of autonomy within STM include syncing multiple non-authoritative catalogs of resident space objects, or determining which spacecraft maneuvers when preventing impending conjunctions between multiple spacecraft. The STM prototype is based on modern micro-service architecture adhering to OpenAPI standards and deployed in industry standard Docker containers, facilitating easy communication between different participants or services. The system architecture is designed to facilitate adding and replacing services with minimal disruption. We have implemented some example participant services (e.g. a space situational awareness provider/SSA, a conjunction assessment supplier/CAS, an automated maneuver advisor/AMA) within the prototype. Different services, with creative algorithms folded into then, can fulfil similar functional roles within the STM architecture by flexibly connecting to it using pre-defined APIs and data models, thereby lowering the barrier to entry of new players in the STM marketplace. We demonstrate the STM prototype on a multiple conjunction scenario with multiple maneuverable spacecraft, where an example CAS and AMA can recommend optimal maneuvers to the spacecraft operators, based on a predefined reward function. Such tools can intelligently search the space of potential collision avoidance maneuvers with varying parameters like lead time and propellant usage, optimize a customized reward function, and be implemented as a scheduling service within the STM architecture. The case study shows an example of autonomous maneuver planning is possible using the API-based framework. As satellite populations and predicted conjunctions increase, an STM architecture can facilitate seamless information exchange related to collision prediction and mitigation among various service applications on different platforms and servers. The availability of such an STM network also opens up new research topics on satellite maneuver planning, scheduling and negotiation across disjoint entities.

space traffic management↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Thermal Vacuum Testing Strategy and Thermal Desktop Model Correlation for the Moon to Mars Planetary Autonomous Construction Technologies (MMPACT) Robotic Terrestrial Arm

This paper discusses the initial thermal vacuum testing of the MMPACT robotic terrestrial arm. The robotic arm is part of a construction system designed for the lunar south pole surface. The first thermal vacuum test was a risk mitigation test to ensure the arm could operate in vacuum, with all other data collection as secondary priorities. 44 thermocouples (TCs) were attached to the arm. Installation was done with additional care to account for both the extra wiring harness weight on the arm with the TC wires and increased focus on stabilizing the TC attachments to the moving components. Thermal steady state of <= 0.01°C/hour was reached for the hot set of testing conditions. This data was used to correlate the Thermal Desktop (TD) model to the test results within +/- 5°C.

Thermal analysis↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Thermal Vacuum Testing Strategy and Thermal Desktop Model Correlation for the Moon to Mars Planetary Autonomous Construction Technologies (MMPACT) Robotic Terrestrial Arm

This paper discusses the initial thermal vacuum testing of the MMPACT robotic terrestrial arm. The robotic arm is part of a construction system designed for the lunar south pole surface. The first thermal vacuum test was a risk mitigation test to ensure the arm could operate in vacuum, with all other data collection as secondary priorities. 44 thermocouples (TCs) were attached to the arm. Installation was done with additional care to account for both the extra wiring harness weight on the arm with the TC wires and increased focus on stabilizing the TC attachments to the moving components. Thermal steady state of <= 0.01°C/hour was reached for the hot set of testing conditions. This data was used to correlate the Thermal Desktop (TD) model to the test results within +/- 5°C.

Thermal analysis↗
NASA NTRS2011

Initial Characterization of Optical Communications with Disruption-Tolerant Network Protocols

Disruption-tolerant networks (DTNs) are groups of network assets connected with a suite of communication protocol technologies designed to mitigate the effects of link delay and disruption. Application of DTN protocols to diverse groups of network resources in multiple sub-networks results in an overlay network-of-networks with autonomous data routing capability. In space environments where delay or disruption is expected, performance of this type of architecture (such as an interplanetary internet) can increase with the inclusion of new communications mediums and techniques. Space-based optical communication links are therefore an excellent building block of space DTN architectures. When compared to traditional radio frequency (RF) communications, optical systems can provide extremely power-efficient and high bandwidth links bridging sub-networks. Because optical links are more susceptible to link disruption and experience the same light-speed delays as RF, optical-enabled DTN architectures can lessen potential drawbacks and maintain the benefits of autonomous optical communications over deep space distances. These environment-driven expectations - link delay and interruption, along with asymmetric data rates - are the purpose of the proof-of-concept experiment outlined herein. In recognizing the potential of these two technologies, we report an initial experiment and characterization of the performance of a DTN-enabled space optical link. The experiment design employs a point-to-point free-space optical link configured to have asymmetric bandwidth. This link connects two networked systems running a DTN protocol implementation designed and written at JPL for use on spacecraft, and further configured for higher bandwidth performance. Comparing baseline data transmission metrics with and without periodic optical link interruptions, the experiment confirmed the DTN protocols' ability to handle real-world unexpected link outages while maintaining capability of reliably delivering data at relatively high rates. Finally, performance characterizations from this data suggest performance optimizations to configuration and protocols for future optical-specific DTN space link scenarios.

Space networking↗
NASA NTRS2012

Autonomous Mission Operations

NASA's Advanced Exploration Systems Autonomous Mission Operations (AMO) project conducted an empirical investigation of the impact of time-delay on todays mission operations, and of the effect of processes and mission support tools designed to mitigate time-delay related impacts. Mission operation scenarios were designed for NASA's Deep Space Habitat (DSH), an analog spacecraft habitat, covering a range of activities including nominal objectives, DSH system failures, and crew medical emergencies. The scenarios were simulated at time-delay values representative of Lunar (1.2-5 sec), Near Earth Object (NEO) (50 sec) and Mars (300 sec) missions. Each combination of operational scenario and time-delay was tested in a Baseline configuration, designed to reflect present-day operations of the International Space Station, and a Mitigation configuration in which a variety of software tools, information displays, and crew-ground communications protocols were employed to assist both crews and Flight Control Team (FCT) members with the long-delay conditions. Preliminary findings indicate: 1) Workload of both crew members and FCT members generally increased along with increasing time delay. 2) Advanced procedure execution viewers, caution and warning tools, and communications protocols such as text messaging decreased the workload of both flight controllers and crew, and decreased the difficulty of coordinating activities. 3) Whereas crew workload ratings increased between 50 sec and 300 sec of time-delay in the Baseline configuration, workload ratings decreased (or remained flat) in the Mitigation configuration.

Mission Operations↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Uncertainty in Servicing and Assembly Tasks for Space Robotic Manipulators

This presentation will discuss a subset of the sources of uncertainty that impact autonomous in-space servicing, assembly, and manufacturing missions. These include robotic manipulator modeling uncertainties in both kinematics and dynamics, perception error associated machine learning models for pose estimation, and sensor noise. Mitigation strategies will be discussed including the incorporation of capture envelopes in the design of robotic tools and selection of robot goal poses to minimize end-effector sensitivity in manipulators with redundant degrees of freedom.

robotics↗
NASA NTRS2003

Navigation Concepts for the James Webb Space Telescope

This paper evaluates the performance that can be achieved using candidate ground and onboard navigation approaches for operation of the James Webb Space Telescope, which will be in an orbit about the Sun-Earth L2 libration point. The ground navigation approach processes standard range and Doppler measurements from the Deep Space Network The onboard navigation approach processes celestial object measurements and/or ground-to- spacecraft Doppler measurements to autonomously estimate the spacecraft s position and velocity and Doppler reference frequency. Particular attention is given to assessing the absolute position and velocity accuracy that can be achieved in the presence of the frequent spacecraft reorientations and momentum unloads planned for this mission. The ground navigation approach provides stable navigation solutions using a tracking schedule of one 30-minute contact per day. The onboard navigation approach that uses only optical quality celestial object measurements provides stable autonomous navigation solutions. This study indicates that unmodeled changes in the solar radiation pressure cross-sectional area and modeled momentum unload velocity changes are the major error sources. These errors can be mitigated by modeling these changes, by estimating corrections to compensate for the changes, or by including acceleration measurements.

Long, Anne↗
NASA NTRS2017

Cyber Safety and Security for Reduced Crew Operations (RCO)

NASA and the Aviation Industry is looking into reduced crew operations (RCO) that would cut today's required two-person flight crews down to a single pilot with support from ground-based crews. Shared responsibility across air and ground personnel will require highly reliable and secure data communication and supporting automation, which will be safety-critical for passenger and cargo aircraft. This paper looks at the different types and degrees of authority delegation given from the air to the ground and the ramifications of each, including the safety and security hazards introduced, the mitigation mechanisms for these hazards, and other demands on an RCO system architecture which would be highly invasive into (almost) all safety-critical avionics. The adjacent fields of unmanned aerial systems and autonomous ground vehicles are viewed to find problems that RCO may face and related aviation accident scenarios are described. The paper explores possible data communication architectures to meet stringent performance and information security (INFOSEC) requirements of RCO. Subsequently, potential challenges for RCO data communication authentication, encryption and non-repudiation are identified.

Communications↗
NASA NTRS2017

Cyber Safety and Security for Reduced Crew Operations (RCO)

NASA and the Aviation Industry is looking into reduced crew operations (RCO) that would cut today's required two-person flight crews down to a single pilot with support from ground-based crews. Shared responsibility across air and ground personnel will require highly reliable and secure data communication and supporting automation, which will be safety-critical for passenger and cargo aircraft. This paper looks at the different types and degrees of authority delegation given from the air to the ground and the ramifications of each, including the safety and security hazards introduced, the mitigation mechanisms for these hazards, and other demands on an RCO system architecture which would be highly invasive into (almost) all safety-critical avionics. The adjacent fields of unmanned aerial systems and autonomous ground vehicles are viewed to find problems that RCO may face and related aviation accident scenarios are described. The paper explores possible data communication architectures to meet stringent performance and information security (INFOSEC) requirements of RCO. Subsequently, potential challenges for RCO data communication authentication, encryption and non-repudiation are identified. The approach includes a comprehensive safety-hazard analysis of the RCO system to determine top level INFOSEC requirements for RCO and proposes an option for effective RCO implementation. This paper concludes with questioning the economic viability of RCO in light of the expense of overcoming the operational safety and security hazards it would introduce.

Aircraft Communication↗
NASA NTRS2023

Progressively Enabling Earth Independent Medical Operations (EIMO)

This panel presents the findings from a series of Technical Interchange Meetings (TIMs) hosted by the Exploration Medical Capability Element (ExMC) in NASA’s Human Research Program. The topics for the TIMs were derived from a 2-day conference of senior leaders and subject matters experts that collectively outlined a multi-faceted strategy designed to optimize crew health and performance through an increasingly autonomous medical approach. The first abstract in this panel outlines the scope of issues related to data collection, usage, transmission and computing capacity to facilitate EIMO. The second presentation provides an overview of the challenges in developing curricula and advanced training tools to baseline knowledge, skills and abilities (KSA), verify clinical competency and assure retention during prolonged durations inherent in exploration-class missions. An overview of the complicated medical supply and resource chain necessary to facilitate EIMO is provided in the third presentation of this panel. The final presentation in this EIMO panel surveys the breadth and depth of demands on cognitive load expected to be experienced by crew on an exploration mission and proposes strategies to mitigate the prospect of cognitive overload through methods to shift task load from the crew to multi-modal artificial intelligence based medical support systems. Taken together, these presentations summarize the challenges to be expected and potential solution spaces to be explored and developed to progressively enable increasing autonomous medical operations to support crewed missions beyond low earth orbit. Through EIMO focused pre-mission planning, integrated data architecture design, innovative training development and AI-assisted task load management, the gradual transition of medical care and decision making from terrestrial to space-based assets enabling support of astronaut health and performance and reducing overall mission risk is achievable.

Jay Lemery↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Progressively Enabling Earth Independent Medical Operations (EIMO)

This panel presents the findings from a series of Technical Interchange Meetings (TIMs) hosted by the Exploration Medical Capability Element (ExMC) in NASA’s Human Research Program. The topics for the TIMs were derived from a 2-day conference of senior leaders and subject matters experts that collectively outlined a multi-faceted strategy designed to optimize crew health and performance through an increasingly autonomous medical approach. The first abstract in this panel outlines the scope of issues related to data collection, usage, transmission and computing capacity to facilitate EIMO. The second presentation provides an overview of the challenges in developing curricula and advanced training tools to baseline knowledge, skills and abilities (KSA), verify clinical competency and assure retention during prolonged durations inherent in exploration-class missions. An overview of the complicated medical supply and resource chain necessary to facilitate EIMO is provided in the third presentation of this panel. The final presentation in this EIMO panel surveys the breadth and depth of demands on cognitive load expected to be experienced by crew on an exploration mission and proposes strategies to mitigate the prospect of cognitive overload through methods to shift task load from the crew to multi-modal artificial intelligence based medical support systems. Taken together, these presentations summarize the challenges to be expected and potential solution spaces to be explored and developed to progressively enable increasing autonomous medical operations to support crewed missions beyond low earth orbit. Through EIMO focused pre-mission planning, integrated data architecture design, innovative training development and AI-assisted task load management, the gradual transition of medical care and decision making from terrestrial to space-based assets enabling support of astronaut health and performance and reducing overall mission risk is achievable.

John Lemery↗
NASA NTRS2016

Conceptual Drivers for an Exploration Medical System

Interplanetary spaceflight provides unique challenges that have not been encountered in prior spaceflight experience. Extended distance and timeframes introduce new challenges such as an inability to resupply medications and consumables, inability to evacuate injured or ill crew, and communication delays that introduce a requirement for some level of autonomous medical capability. Because of these challenges the approaches used in prior programs have limited application to a proposed three year Mars mission. This paper proposes a paradigm shift in the approach to medical risk mitigation for crew health and mission objectives threatened by inadequate medical capabilities in the setting of severely limited resources. A conceptual approach is outlined to derive medical system and vehicle needs from an integrated vision of how medical care will be provided within this new paradigm. Using NASA Design Reference Missions this process assesses each mission phase to deconstruct medical needs at any point during a mission. Two operational categories are proposed, nominal operations (pre-planned activities) and contingency operations (medical conditions requiring evaluation) that meld clinical needs and research needs into a single system. These definitions are used to derive a task level analysis to support quantifiable studies into a medical capabilities trade. This trade allows system design to proceed from both a mission centric and ethics-based approach to medical limitations in an exploration class mission.

Antonsen, E.↗
NASA NTRS2017

Infrared Free Space Communication - The Autonomous Testing of Free Space Infrared Communication

Fiber optics has been a winning player in the game of high-speed communication and data transfer in cable connections. Yet, in free space RF has been the repeated choice of communication medium of the space industry. Investigating the benefits of free space optical communication over radio frequency is worthwhile. An increase in science data rate return capabilities could occur if optical communication is implemented. Optical communication systems also provide efficiencies in power, mass, and volume over RF systems1. Optical communication systems have been demonstrated from a satellite in orbit with the moon to earth, and resulted in the highest data rates ever seen through space (622Mbps)2. Because of these benefits, optical communication is far superior to RF. The HiDRA (High Data Rate Architecture) project is researching Passive Misalignment Mitigation of Dynamic Free Apace Optical Communication Links. The goal of this effort is to enable gigabit per second transmission of data in short range dynamic links (less than 100 meters). In practice this would enhance data rates between sites on the International Space Station with minimal size, weight, and power requirements. This paper will focus on an autonomous code and a hardware setup that will be used to fulfill the next step in the research being conducted. The free space optical communications pointing downfalls will be investigated. This was achieved by creating 5 python programs and a top-level code to automate this test.

Heldman, Christopher↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Tradeoffs When Considering Deep Reinforcement Learning for Contingency Management in Advanced Air Mobility

Air transportation is undergoing a rapid evolution globally with the introduction of Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) and with it comes novel challenges and opportunities for transforming aviation. As AAM operations introduce increasing heterogeneity in vehicle capabilities and density, increased levels of automation are likely necessary to achieve operational safety and efficiency goals. This paper focuses on one example where increased automation has been suggested. Autonomous operations will need contingency management systems that can monitor evolving risk across a span of interrelated (or interdependent) hazards and, if necessary, execute appropriate control interventions via supervised or automated decision making. Accommodating this complex environment may require automated functions (autonomy) that apply artificial intelligence (AI) techniques that can adapt and respond to a quickly changing environment. This paper explores the use of Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) which has shown promising performance in complex and high-dimensional environments where the objective can be constructed as a sequential decision-making problem. An extension of a prior formulation of the contingency management problem as a Markov Decision Process (MDP) is presented and uses a DRL framework to train agents that mitigate hazards present in the simulation environment. A comparison of these learning-based agents and classical techniques is presented in terms of their performance, verification difficulties, and development process.

machine learning↗