Integrated Intelligent Vehicle Management Framework

The success of NASA´s exploration activities hinges on the ability to make space systems safer, more affordable, and more self-sufficient. As these missions expand to ever increasing distances from earth, the systems that support these missions will be required to become more self-sufficient. Integrated Vehicle Health Management (IVHM) is an approach that supports vehicle self-sufficiency. The architecture presented in this paper integrates advanced computational techniques with technologies for spacecraft that can generate responses through detection, diagnosis, reasoning, and adapt to system faults in support of Integrated Intelligent Vehicle Management (IIVM). This paper presents an Integrated Intelligent Vehicle Management (IIVM) concept which provides for the complete integration and management of all vehicle functions and subsystems. This research presents architecture for vehicle level interaction between subsystem functions and vehicle level functions. This paper presents an IIVM framework that encompasses all vehicle functions and subsystems. Furthermore, this paper presents vehicle management system interactions and subsystem management functions. Each of the subsystems have the following functions: performance, diagnostics, prognostics, monitoring, and control. This paper presents a framework which conceptualizes how these subsystems interact with the various system management functions. This is accomplished by supplying new information in real time to the vehicle avionics real-time to allow responses to vehicle subsystem failures and performance degradation. This framework can potentially achieve autonomous operation capabilities necessary to assure crew safety and mission safety. IIVM is a superset of what has traditionally been defined as Avionics, Integrated Vehicle Health Management (IVHM)/Integrated System Health Management, functions performed on the ground, and Autonomous Mission Management (AMM)/Autonomous Flight Management. Each of these concep- ts focuses on only a portion of the total vehicle functional capabilities, and each of these concepts alone perform necessary, but incomplete and sometimes duplicative tasks. This paper presents an II VM framework which is the combination of these functions into a single system which is fully aware of the complete vehicle state, and is able to make decisions based on crew safety, mission objectives, and vehicle status, and can effect changes in the vehicle based on these decisions.