Intelligent self-situational awareness for unmanned and robotic platforms

In order to move from human-in-the-loop tele-operation to semi and fully autonomous operation, unmanned and robotic platforms will require self-awareness in order to deal with subsystem degradation and failure. Intelligent self-situational awareness refers to the ability of a system to autonomously assess its health and condition and to interpret the impact of its current and future health and condition on current mission objectives. Intelligent self-situational awareness requires integration of system health monitoring and autonomous control and is an extension of embedded diagnostics and prognostics, integrated system health management, and condition based maintenance that incorporates not only the ability to perceive current health and condition, but to assess the impact of the current health and condition within the context of the current mission requirements and resources. Intelligent System Health Monitoring and Autonomous Control have both been identified as enabling technologies for unmanned ground vehicles and for future NASA Exploration Missions. This paper describes ongoing work to identify architectures and approaches for integrating ISHM and control in autonomous and robotic systems drawing on experiences in Department of Defense and NASA.