Asian Surveying & Mapping
Breaking News
HAL to build, market Isro’s SSLV in landmark deal
New Delhi, Jun 20: In a historic move for...
Taiwan developing space capabilities for all-weather imaging
TAIPEI (TVBS News) — Taiwan is advancing its space...
Honda hails successful test of reusable rocket as it looks to get into the space business
Tokyo — Japan's second-biggest carmaker, Honda, has successfully tested...
China’s space program provides larger platform for broader international cooperation
BEIJING -- Experts from China's manned space program said...
India To Launch $1.5 Billion Joint Earth Mission With NASA In July
National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the Indian...
Axiom-4 mission delayed again: ISRO confirms Subhanshu Shukla’s ISS spaceflight won’t launch before 22 June 2025
The Axiom-4 mission to the International Space Station has...
Mengzhou spacecraft for China’s moon-landing mission passes landmark test flight
China has completed the inaugural test flight of its...
Space application for ITMA Asia + CITME 2026 opens
Shanghai – Space application for the 2026 edition of...
Yanmar, Chia Tai and XAG Empower Thai Agriculture through Innovation
Bang Nam Priao District, Chachoengsao Province, Thailand – On...
bitsensing Signs MOU with IKIO Technologies to Advance AI-Based Traffic Monitoring on India’s Expressways, Highways and Municipal Areas
Backed by proven success in South Korea and Europe,...

April 21st, 2020
Orbit Logic Tackles Autonomous Planning of Martian Swarms

Orbit Logic has been awarded a Phase I Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) contract sponsored by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to develop the Mars/Interplanetary Swarm Design and Evaluation Framework (MISDEF) System.

The Mars/Interplanetary Swarm Design and Evaluation Framework (MISDEF) System is an autonomous planning architecture supporting collaborative satisfaction of science needs by orbital (satellite), surface (rover) and atmospheric (drone) assets. The solution is being developed in partnership with the University of Colorado Boulder (CU).

Orbit Logic’s existing Autonomous Planning System (APS) is the foundation of the architecture, providing asset level resource planning based upon information contained within a Common Relevant Operating Picture (CROP) module, whose contents are shared across the entire team during communication opportunities.

CU’s Event-Triggered Decentralized Data Fusion (ET-DDF) algorithm is employed to maintain the CROP’s shared state knowledge with minimal (and in some cases zero) data exchange. This allows the team to collectively work toward satisfaction of mission goals with high assurance that the plans employed by each asset will be de-conflicted. Multi-factor figure-of-merit scoring of the activities that each asset plans to undertake are distributed via the CROP as well, facilitating a fully-scalable and decentralized approach to selection – assets with lower scores can stand-down on that activity and re-plan to accommodate other mission needs.

CU’s Mars Robotic Asset Cooperative Control (MRACC) algorithm is being utilized as an APS Specialized Autonomous Planning Agent (SAPA) to solve the distributed information gathering problems posed by many applications of robotic swarming strategies. The graphic above depicts an example mission scenario, where meeting a science objective can consist of detecting an ad-hoc event and orchestrating the use of multiple vehicles and sensor types to perform follow-up and data processing on multiple nodes to arrive at the final set of science artifacts.

About Orbit Logic

Orbit Logic (www.orbitlogic.com) specializes in mission planning and scheduling solutions for aerospace and geospatial intelligence. Orbit Logic’s operationally proven COTS products create better plans faster with fewer resources for all mission phases. Orbit Logic services are available to configure, customize, and integrate Orbit Logic’s mobile, web-based, desktop, and flight software applications to provide turn-key operational solutions that leverage the latest available technologies to meet customer goals and exceed their expectations.