OUA: Observation Unit Autonomy

Abstract

More and more scientific equipment are being placed outside to monitor the environment. Such observation units can benefit from increased autonomy to function during harsh conditions and network partitioning. Environmental conditions like low temperatures can damage equipment. Therefor it is important for equipment to be able to autonomously launch countermeasures. This thesis describes an autonomous task scheduling system called OUA: observation Unit Autonomy, which is designed to schedule tasks autonomously on a observation unit based the units internal and external states. To schedule tasks the system comes with a standard model that tells the scheduler what it should expect will happen when it performs a set of actions. Not all observation units have the same hardware, or perform the same tasks, so a fixed model will be inaccurate. That is why the system has the ability to improve on the model based on the data it gathers about its internal and external state. Experiments where run to determine if an observation unit could increase its internal temperature to avoid damage from the environment, and what those factors would allows the system designed here to be able to increase the internal temperature in the observation unit. We have will in this thesis describe the architecture, design and implementation of a scheduling system, that schedules tasks based on temperature and network availability in order to increase the internal temperature of an observation unit.