Intelligent Agent Technology for Spacecraft Reprogrammability

The purpose of this research effort is to develop techniques and methodologies required for remote reporgramming of intelligent spacecraft systems that do not require expensive uplink bandwidth or communications connection time, and be usable with systems using MIL-STD-1750A processors. Reticular Systems, Inc., is proposing to investigate the application of intelligent agent technology, an area of distributed artificial intelligence which builds networks of communicating and cooperating agents that address the difficulties of complex systems that must solve problems using limited communications bandwidth. Reticular Systems, Inc., proposes the use of an intelligent agent that will handle the reprogramming workload aboard the spacecraft or satellite. This agenti is specifically designed to handl the problems involved in on-board spacecraft reprogramming. The agent will handle communications with the ground and intelligently modify the code of the on-board expert system. A ground-based reprogramming agent will be used in developed software changes and updates. Reticular Systems, Inc., proposes to implement the reprogramming techniques and technologies in a small prototype system similar to systems found aboard spacecraft and satellites, using a prototypical expert system to verify the reprogramming techniques, and develop figures of merit.