Evolutionary mechanisms for smart on-board adaptive sensing applied to the MECA electrometer

Abstract

In-situ exploration as required for example by missions to comets and planets with unknown environmental conditions, has recently been approached with new ideas, such as the use of biology-inspired mechanisms for hardware sensor adaptation. The application of evolution-inspired formalisms to hardware design and self-configuration lead to the concept of evolvable hardware (EHW). EHW refers to self reconfiguration of electronic hardware by evolutionary/genetic reconfiguration mechanisms. In this paper we describe the initial development of efficient mechanisms for smart on-board adaptive sensing, adaptively controlling the reconfigurable pre-processing analog electronics using evolvable hardware, which will lead to higher quality, lean data.