Autonomously Self-Repairing Circuits

We propose to exploit a new type of computing hardware and software to develop computers and circuits for remote manned and unmanned missions that are significantly more autonomous in dealing with faults or damage than current systems. The systems we will develop will contain self-repairing subsystems that, when given a single rebuild command by the system or by a person, can quickly diagnose their own hardware, detect and isolate faults, and use the remaining good hardware to reconstruct themselves. The system would be able to issue these rebuild commands to multiple subsystems at once, hastening the recovery procedure. Using our techniques plus redundancy and some arbitration, it is also possible to make the onboard system monitoring significantly more autonomous, distributed, and self-repairing. The result of Phase I and II funding will be services and products. Our company will be able to provide a service to take fairly complex digital circuit designs and recast them as self-repairing circuits. On the product side, we will provide hardware/software systems that implement the desired circuits and rebuild themselves when faults are detected. The systems will not require external testing or diagnosis of system hardware, nor will they require externally guided repair.