Enabling onboard spacecraft autonomy though goal-based architectures: an integration of model-based artificial intelligence planning with procedural elaboration

This paper describes the integration of a model-based planner into a procedural architecture. This architecture is unusual in that the internal procedures and the planners inter-operate in an asynchronous fashion in a multithreaded environment via a goal-based interface. The submission of goals may trigger either internal procedures or planners, and both internal procedures and planners may submit goals. The procedural architecture described is the Mission Data System (MDS) Goal Achieving Module (GAM) architecture. The planner described is the CASPER (Continuous Activity Scheduling Planning Execution and Replanning) system. This approach has been prototyped and tested against virtual spacecraft and comet-lander operation scenarios and simulations.