Computational Intelligence - November 2013 - 25

Autonomous Asteroid
Exploration by Rational Agents
N.K. Lincoln
Faculty of Engineering
and the Environment,
University of Southampton, UK

S.M.Veres
Department of Automatic Control
and Systems Engineering,
University of Sheffield, UK

L.A. Dennis, M. Fisher,
and A. Lisitsa
Department of Computer Science,
University of Liverpool, UK

Image lIcensed by Ingram PublIshIng

Abstract-The history of software agent
architectures has been driven by the parallel
requirements of real-time decision-making
and the sophistication of the capabilities the
agent can provide. Starting from reactive,
rule based, subsumption through to layered
and belief-desire-intention architectures, a
compromise always has to be reached
between the ability to respond to the environment in a timely manner and the provision of capabilities that cope with relatively
complex environments. In the spirit of these
past developments, this paper is proposing a
novel "anthropomorphic" agent architecture
that brings together the most desirable features: natural language definitions of agent
reasoning and skill descriptions, shared
knowledge with operators, the combination
of fast reactive as well as long term planning,
ability to explain why certain actions are
taken by the autonomous agent and finally
inherent formal verifiability. With these attributes, the proposed agent architecture can
potentially cope with the most demanding
autonomous space missions.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MCI.2013.2279559
Date of publication: 16 October 2013

I. Introduction

omplex autonomous (robotic) missions require decisions to be made
taking into account multiple factors such as mission goals, priorities,
hardware functionality, performance and instances of unexpected
events. The concise representation and use of relevant knowledge
about action and sensing is only part of the autonomous control problem; the
organization of the necessary perception processes, prediction of the possible
outcomes of action (or inaction), and the communication required for decision making are also critical. The development of any autonomous system culminates in a functional intelligent system, where the developed system
operates within a specified domain and implements procedures based upon
declarative, procedural and generally heterogeneous knowledge defined across
the operational domain. The consistency and integrity of this system knowledge is an essential aspect of the resultant system. Motivated by these problems,
our research has produced a formally verifiable deliberative agent architecture
linked to a natural language knowledge representation of the world model and
possible actions. This architecture has been applied in the context of autonomous space systems, both within simulated environments, and on hardware
within a purpose built ground facility [1, 2, 3].
Autonomy is a highly relevant topic for deep space missions where scientific
interest in asteroids acts as a technology driver to produce spacecrafts which perform complex missions at great distances from Earth. Two such missions, Hayabusa and Dawn, run by JAXA and NASA respectively, are asteroid exploration

Research supported by EPSRC through grants EP/F037201/1 and EP/F037570/1.

November 2013 | ieee ComputatioNal iNtelligeNCe magaziNe

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Computational Intelligence - November 2013