Software Tools for Fault Management Technologies

System autonomy is a key enabler for satisfying complex mission goals, enhancing mission success probabilities, as well as safety at a reduced cost. Fault Management (FM) is one of the most crucial components of system autonomy. NASA has come up with an FM Handbook that provides requirements, rules and guidelines for improving the FM design, development, verification & validation and operations processes. However, adherence to FM directives for realizing the above mentioned goals necessitates aid from advanced software tools. These tools should be able to model a system (during the design phase) from the FM perspective, support various design evaluation and validation activities, identify shortcomings or inconsistencies in the designs, and aid FM design updating/revision. During the operational phase, these tools should perform fault detection, diagnostics, and prognostics; assess functional capabilities of various systems; provide actionable decisions for health management; facilitate optimal troubleshooting and maintenance; and assess probabilities of individual mission objective satisfaction and overall mission success. QSI's TEAMS (Testability Engineering and Maintenance System) SW suite already hosts a number of these desired capabilities. Consequently, QSI proposes to introduce additional modeling and analytic capabilities to TEAMS and enhance the existing, so as to make it an effective support tool for FM.