A verifiable, autonomous satellite control system

Abstract

The authors describe an autonomous embedded expert system for satellite-based electronic control systems using multiple sensors. The autonomous expert control system methodology was developed with emphasis on expert system verification. It was demonstrated with a multisensor satellite thermal control subsystem responsible for real-time health and status monitoring, subsystem commanding, and decision assistance. A propositional logic rule base was used to create a rule structure that can be verified and easily transferred into a hardware implementation. The 400 propositional logic rule demonstration of the thermal control subsystem showed the feasibility and testability of the compact expert system approach for autonomous embedded applications.<>