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29th Annual IEEE/NASA Software Engineering Workshop
Towards a Hybrid Formal Method for Swarm-Based Exploration Missions
Greenbelt, Maryland
April 06-April 07
ISBN: 0-7695-2306-4
Christopher A. Rouff, SAIC Advanced Concepts Business Unit McLean, VA
Michael G. Hinchey, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Information Systems Division Greenbelt, Maryland, USA
James L. Rash, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Information Systems Division Greenbelt, Maryland, USA
Walter F. Truszkowski, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Information Systems Division Greenbelt, Maryland, USA

NASA is investigating the use of swarms of robotic vehicles for future space exploration missions. Such swarms offer many advantages of traditional, single spacecraft, missions. Intelligent swarms offer potential for selfmanagement and survivability, and their emergent properties make such swarms potentially very powerful. However, they are signi.cantly more dif.cult to design, and ensuring that proper behaviors will emerge is a complex task. NASA?s FAST project is investigating the use of formal approaches to the speci.cation and veri.cation of such systems. Using ANTS, a NASA concept mission, as a case study, multiple formal methods were evaluated to determine their effectiveness in modeling and ensuring desired swarm behavior. We discuss this evaluation and propose a hybrid formal method for use in the development of future NASA intelligent swarms.

Index Terms:
Verification, Formal Methods, Swarm Technology
Citation:
Christopher A. Rouff, Michael G. Hinchey, James L. Rash, Walter F. Truszkowski, "Towards a Hybrid Formal Method for Swarm-Based Exploration Missions," sew, pp.253-264, 29th Annual IEEE/NASA Software Engineering Workshop, 2005
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