Route Manifest Composition

Mechanism

The route manifest is a serialized data structure consisting of an ordered sequence of segment descriptors, each of which carries the segment's geographic envelope, the signing authority that asserted the segment's traversal authorization, the credentialed marker references that establish the segment's marker-track basis, the segment's per-segment policy fragment defining conditions of valid traversal, and a lineage record describing the composition operations through which the segment entered the current manifest. Segment descriptors are content-addressed by a hash over the descriptor body, enabling the manifest to be referenced by its terminal hash and any subset of segments to be quoted without quoting the whole.

Composition operations are defined as a closed set of manifest-to-manifest transformations. The attach operation takes a sub-route manifest and a junction segment in the current manifest and produces a new manifest in which the sub-route's segments are inserted at the junction. The detach operation takes a designation of segments in the current manifest and produces a new manifest from which those segments have been removed, retaining the surrounding context. The splice operation combines a detach and an attach atomically, replacing one sub-route with another at a designated junction. The extend operation appends a sub-route to the terminal segment of the current manifest. Each operation produces a successor manifest whose lineage record references the predecessor manifest's terminal hash and the operation's parameters, forming an append-only directed history of manifest states.

Per-segment lineage is preserved by the composition operations through a structural invariant: every segment in any manifest carries the lineage record it had at first introduction, augmented by a chain of composition operations through which it has passed. A segment introduced into the manifest at trip start retains its original lineage even if every other segment around it has been replaced; a segment introduced through a mid-trip attach carries the attach operation's lineage entry alongside its own original credentialed-marker lineage. Lineage is therefore both per-segment and per-manifest: per-segment lineage establishes how a particular segment came to be authorized; per-manifest lineage, derivable from the segment lineages, establishes how the current manifest came to be the manifest under which the vehicle is currently operating.

Manifest validity is maintained as a structural invariant under composition. Every composition operation is rejected unless the resulting manifest's segment sequence forms a connected traversal in the underlying marker-track topology, every segment's signing authority remains within the operating unit's policy admission framework, and every segment's per-segment policy fragment is satisfied by the operating unit's current state. Operations that would produce an invalid manifest are refused at the composition boundary rather than producing a manifest that requires post-hoc validation.

Operating Parameters

The manifest's maximum segment count is a deployment parameter that bounds the storage and verification cost of any single manifest. Long-haul deployments configure higher caps to accommodate routes that span many segments; short-haul deployments configure lower caps to enforce manifest concision. When the cap is exceeded by a proposed composition, the composition is rejected and the operating unit must either close the current manifest by reaching its terminal segment or detach earlier segments before extending.

The composition-operation rate limit governs how frequently manifest-modifying operations may be issued. The limit prevents both inadvertent thrashing in which a poorly-tuned routing logic continuously rewrites the manifest, and adversarial attempts to obscure operational history by burying meaningful changes in a flood of trivial ones. The rate limit is enforced at the composition boundary and is signed into each composition operation's lineage entry so that an auditor can detect rate-limit policy changes after the fact.

The lineage retention policy governs how deep the per-segment lineage chain is kept before older entries are summarized into a lineage digest. Full retention preserves every composition operation a segment has passed through; digest retention preserves only the original lineage and a summary digest of intermediate operations. Full retention supports forensic-grade audit; digest retention supports lower storage cost in deployments where intermediate composition history is not needed.

Authority admission for composed segments is governed by the same policy framework that governs original-segment admission: a sub-route attached at composition time is admitted only if its signing authority is within the operating unit's admitted set at the time of attachment. The framework allows the admitted set to evolve during operation; segments admitted under a previously-admitted authority that is later removed from the admitted set are flagged for detachment at the next composition boundary rather than retroactively invalidated.

Alternative Embodiments

In a delivery-vehicle embodiment, the manifest is composed at trip start from the dispatch authority's authorized segments and extended in flight as the dispatch authority adds delivery stops to the active load assignment. Each new stop is attached as a sub-route that detaches at completion, leaving the surrounding manifest intact. In an autonomous-truck embodiment crossing multiple state DOTs, the manifest is composed segment-by-segment as the truck approaches each authority's region; segments authorized by an upcoming authority are attached just before entry; segments authorized by a recently-departed authority are retained in the manifest for audit but are detached from the active operating window once the vehicle has cleared the authority's region.

In a drone-routing embodiment, the manifest is composed under altitude-stratified authorities in which different authorities sign segments at different altitude bands, and a vertical maneuver corresponds to a splice operation replacing a low-altitude sub-route with a high-altitude sub-route. In a maritime-routing embodiment, the manifest is composed across coastal-state, exclusive-economic-zone, and high-seas segments with lineage preserved through changes of jurisdictional regime as the vessel transits zone boundaries.

In a multi-vehicle convoy embodiment, a single manifest authorizes coordinated traversal by a set of vehicles operating under a fleet authority; per-vehicle sub-routes attach to the convoy's main manifest at form-up segments and detach at break-up segments, with the convoy's main manifest preserving the lineage of every member vehicle's contribution. In a public-transit embodiment, the manifest is composed across operator-segment, infrastructure-segment, and intermodal-transfer-segment authorities, with passenger-facing segments attached and detached as service patterns change without invalidating any underlying infrastructure-segment lineage.

Composition With Other Marker-Track Primitives

Route-manifest composition composes with the credentialed-marker primitive: each segment descriptor in the manifest references the credentialed markers that establish the segment's underlying marker-track basis, and the manifest's validity depends on the markers remaining valid under their issuing authorities. Marker revocation triggers a forced detach of segments whose markers have been revoked, with the detach operation entered into the manifest's lineage so that the operational record reflects the revocation event.

Route-manifest composition composes with the policy admission framework: the framework's admitted-authority set is the gate through which segments enter the manifest, and changes to the admitted set propagate to the manifest as flagged-for-detachment markers on segments now outside the admitted set. The composition mechanism allows the operating unit's policy to evolve during operation without retroactively invalidating manifests already in flight.

Route-manifest composition composes with the operator-intent envelope: a given envelope can require a particular manifest hash as a precondition of admission, ensuring that the agent operating under the envelope is doing so against a manifest the issuing operator has approved. Mid-cycle composition operations produce successor manifests whose hashes can be either pre-approved by the envelope or admitted under a delta-admission rule that accepts only operations within an envelope-specified scope.

Prior-Art Distinction

Conventional navigation architectures pre-compute routes based on map data and treat in-flight changes as recomputation events that produce a fresh route opaquely replacing the prior route. There is no manifest, no composition operation set, no per-segment lineage, and no preservation of authorization basis through modification. Construction zones, traffic incidents, weather events, and regulatory updates produce route invalidation rather than structured composition.

Conventional fleet-management systems track route history but do not represent the route as a composable manifest with structural lineage; instead, route history is logged externally to the routing data structure and lineage is reconstructed by joining log entries against route identifiers. Conventional digital-credential routing systems sign individual route segments but do not provide manifest-level composition or per-segment lineage preservation through composition. Conventional supervisory-control routing in maritime and aviation domains uses signed clearances but treats each clearance as opaque and does not support attach, detach, splice, or extend as primitive operations against a single living manifest.

The disclosure is distinguished by the conjunction of serialized composable manifest, defined composition operation set, per-segment lineage preservation through composition, structural validity invariance under composition, and credentialed authority binding for each segment and each composition operation. The conjunction does not appear in the prior art known to applicant.

Disclosure Scope

The disclosure covers route-manifest composition as an architectural primitive applicable to any vehicle, agent, or operating unit whose movements traverse a marker-track topology under one or more signing authorities. The primitive is independent of the underlying marker-track topology, the specific authority structure, and the specific vehicle modality, including without limitation surface, marine, sub-surface, aerial, and orbital operating environments, and including human-driven, semi-autonomous, and fully autonomous vehicles.

The disclosure expressly contemplates extension to manifests with branching segment graphs in which a manifest authorizes alternative sub-routes selectable at runtime; to manifests with conditional segments whose admission depends on dynamic environmental conditions evaluated at traversal time; to manifests with delegated composition in which a sub-authority is granted scope to compose a portion of the manifest under defined limits; and to revocation protocols in which a manifest can be retracted in flight by its issuing authority, forcing the operating unit to either compose a replacement manifest or enter a safe-hold state. The scope of the disclosure is the architectural primitive and its claim language captures the conjunction of composable manifest, defined composition operation set, per-segment lineage preservation, structural validity invariance, and credentialed authority binding as the inventive contribution distinguishing the disclosure from the closest known prior art. This disclosure corresponds to subject matter described in U.S. Provisional Application No. 64/049,409.