Describes a set of tools that allows a developer to instrument an autonomous control system to log data at run-time and then analyze that data to verify correct program behavior. Analysis is done using an interval logic that allows system engineers to express complex, temporal specifications to be checked against the logged data of the autonomous control program. A feature of both the logging and analysis is that they can work with distributed programs. All data is synchronized into a common database. The data logging tools and the interval logic are fully implemented. Results are given from a NASA distributed autonomous control system application.

An important aspect of interaction among groups of humans and software agents is supporting collaboration among these heterogeneous agents while they operate remotely and communicate asynchronously. We are developing an architecture that supports multiple humans interacting with multiple automated control agents in such a manner. We are evaluating this architecture with a group consisting of the crew of a space-based vehicle and the automated software agents controlling the vehicle systems. Such agent interaction is modelled as a loosely co-ordinated group because this model minimizes agent commitment to group goals and constraints while addressing a significant portion of crew and control agent group behaviours. In this paper, we give background on human interaction with space-based automation. We identify related research in multi-agent autonomous architectures and single agent human-computer interaction systems, we describe our architecture design for human-software agent groups and we identify research issues in loosely co-ordinated human-software groups.