AI Bibliography |
Iacopino, P. P., & Policella, N. (2011). A stigmergy-based paradigm for mission planning and scheduling of multiple spacecraft. AI in Space: Intelligence beyond planet Earth, Barcelona. |
Resource type: Journal Article BibTeX citation key: Iacopino2011 View all bibliographic details |
Categories: Artificial Intelligence, Biological Science, Cognitive Science, Complexity Science, Computer Science, Decision Theory, Engineering, General, Geopolitical, Military Science Subcategories: Autonomous systems, Chaos theory, Decision making, Drones, Edge AI, Internet of things, Machine learning, Neural nets, Robotics, Situational cognition, Space Force, Systems theory, United Kingdom Creators: Iacopino, Policella Publisher: Collection: AI in Space: Intelligence beyond planet Earth, Barcelona |
Attachments |
Abstract |
Missions involving multiple spacecraft, autonomously working together, have become of great interest in the last decade as they offer a number of scientific and engineering advantages. This trend is responsible for an increasing demand on mission planning & scheduling systems able to coordinate the different spacecraft and to allocate tasks amongst them. New approaches are therefore needed to handle this new level of complexity, combining together autonomous solutions for the ground and space segment. In this paper we explore the potentiality of Self-Organizing Multi Agent Systems and Swarm Intelligence to develop a distributed coordination architecture based on the principle of Stigmergy. We start presenting a previously proposed architecture where Stigmergy has been used to achieve self-organizing coordination among a constellation of satellites. We then introduce a new architecture where Stigmergy will play a key role in the decision process of each agent. Such a solution is based on the Polyagent paradigm proposed by Parunak and Brueckner where advantages of reactive coordination are combined with optimization properties similarly exploited by algorithms such as Ant Colony Optimization. After outlining the general system, we show how this system can be applied to a specific case study designed considering the NigeriaSat-2 satellite (produced by Surrey Satellite Technology Limited - SSTL), due to be launched in June 2011). This satellite will be part of Disaster Monitoring Constellation - DMC. In order to demonstrate the planning & scheduling capabilities of our system, the case study focuses on the imaging campaign planning problem associated to NigeriaSat-2. We shall outline the extension to the whole DMC constellation to show the coordination benefits of our solution. The paper presents some preliminary results on the NigeriaSat-2 case study and proposes the future directions. |