Ontogenetic reasoning system for autonomic logistics

Joint Strike Fighter Autonomic Logistics minimize operational and support costs by increasing system reliability, while reducing maintenance requirements to essential levels. Using Prognostics and Health Management, parts and service are ordered or performed only when needed, obviating costly routine scheduled maintenance, and reducing aircraft downtime. Realizing this vision requires communication between the aircraft, industrial contractors and suppliers, and the maintenance and support team. Management of interactions between these entities is challenging, characterized by uncertain information, and conflicting demands for resources. A system is needed to encode the knowledge of maintenance personnel, suggest corrective actions in fault conditions, and learn from previous decisions. Integration with the supply chain would free human resources for more critical decision making tasks. IAC is developing an intelligent software infrastructure to manage these complexities. This ontogenetic reasoning system features an adaptive knowledge base of maintenance information, and autonomous software agents which: (1) analyze on-board sensor and model data, and past behaviors; (2) recommended actions under dynamic and uncertain conditions; (3) manage knowledge base evolution; (4) connect maintenance activities to the supply chain; and (5) perform various communications, security and support functions. This paper presents the architectural design of the system, describes an example application scenario, and concludes with an assessment of the technical challenges in developing such a system using the multi-agent systems approach