# PDR 000: Bound the research to a three-agent bench demonstration

- HTML version: https://robbiepalmer.me/projects/autonomic-satellite-swarm/pdrs/000-bounded-bench-demonstration
- Project: Autonomic Satellite Swarm
- Status: Accepted
- Opened: 2016-07-01
- Decided: 2016-07-01

## Context

The summer research asked whether a small satellite swarm could assign a
temporary mission without a permanent controller and withdraw an unhealthy
agent from further work. The internship had enough time and hardware for a
three-node physical demonstration, not a flight system or a validated model of
spacecraft dynamics.

A useful demonstration needed competing candidates, a temporary coordinator,
observable message loss, and a reversible way to exercise fault policy on a
desk. It also needed to keep the hardware intact after every run. The paper used
"apoptosis" for the fail-safe behavior, but that biological metaphor could
easily imply physical destruction or deorbiting that the prototype could not
perform.

## Decision

Build a three-agent bench demonstration of temporary-leader mission assignment
and local fail-safe withdrawal. Keep the agents independently programmable and
use inexpensive, replaceable components so another researcher can inspect and
repeat the experiment.

The experiment may use visible stand-ins for spacecraft capabilities. A bench
transport may represent a shared radio, a rover may represent an actuator, and
a bounded score may represent candidacy. Every result must identify those
stand-ins and avoid claiming that they validate a spacecraft link, maneuver,
or guidance model.

In this product, "apoptosis" means a safe-disabled software state that lasts
until reset. It does not destroy hardware, command a deorbit, or establish that
an irreversible spacecraft action is safe. Reversible quiescence and
safe-disablement are separate behaviors even when the bench uses simple sensor
and communication faults to demonstrate both.

## Consequences

Three agents are enough to show competing candidates and one relaying path
within the available internship hardware. The demonstration can make the
coordination and failure policies observable without pretending to reproduce a
space environment.

The result is evidence about the implemented protocol and software state
transitions. It is not evidence of flight readiness, physical fault detection,
radio performance, orbit mechanics, collision avoidance, or deorbit safety.
Those claims require separate models, hardware, and validation.

## Evaluation

The demonstration succeeds when any idle agent can introduce a mission, the
three nodes can compare candidacy and assign one node, and a fault scenario can
show reversible quiescence and safe-disablement without damaging hardware.
Documentation and results must name every stand-in and state what the run did
not validate.

## Migration note

This record extracts the original research scope and evidence boundary from the
project narrative and ADRs 000, 002, 003, 004, and 005. The date is the shared
historical date used when those 2016 decisions were reconstructed. The linked
2019 paper is later publication evidence. This migration does not change the
experiment, reinterpret the software state, or add a flight claim. The ADRs
retain the separate hardware, transport, protocol, scoring, and health-state
choices.

## Related records

- Project: [Autonomic Satellite Swarm](https://robbiepalmer.me/projects/autonomic-satellite-swarm.md)
- Implemented by ADR: [ADR 000: Arduino Uno Prototype Platform](https://robbiepalmer.me/projects/autonomic-satellite-swarm/adrs/000-arduino-uno-prototype-platform.md)
- Implemented by ADR: [ADR 001: C++ for the Embedded Agents](https://robbiepalmer.me/projects/autonomic-satellite-swarm/adrs/001-c-plus-plus.md)
- Implemented by ADR: [ADR 002: Infrared as the Bench Transport](https://robbiepalmer.me/projects/autonomic-satellite-swarm/adrs/002-infrared-bench-transport.md)
- Implemented by ADR: [ADR 003: Three-Agent Temporary-Leader Protocol](https://robbiepalmer.me/projects/autonomic-satellite-swarm/adrs/003-temporary-leader-mission-assignment.md)
- Implemented by ADR: [ADR 004: Displacement-Effort Candidacy Score](https://robbiepalmer.me/projects/autonomic-satellite-swarm/adrs/004-displacement-effort-score.md)
- Implemented by ADR: [ADR 005: Agent Health States for the Apoptosis Demonstration](https://robbiepalmer.me/projects/autonomic-satellite-swarm/adrs/005-agent-health-states.md)
- Evidence: [Autonomic Providing Pre-Programmed Death of Cubesats for Avoiding Space JUNK](https://doi.org/10.1109/SMC-IT.2019.00015)

---

Markdown index of this site: https://robbiepalmer.me/llms.txt