Discovery-Driven Sensor Invocation Closed Loop

Mechanism

The Cognition Patent specifies a closed loop with four structural stages. Stage one: a discovery query is posed against the substrate, expressed as a typed predicate over a spatial-temporal window. Stage two: the substrate evaluates the predicate against existing observations and computes a sufficiency score against the consumer's declared confidence threshold. Stage three: when sufficiency is below threshold, the substrate emits a credentialed sensor-invocation observation describing the evidence gap and the requested perception, and propagates that invocation to sensors whose declared capability and operating window intersect the gap. Stage four: sensors that admit the invocation produce credentialed sensor observations, those observations are anchored into the substrate, and the original query re-runs against the augmented evidence base.

The invocation observation is itself a first-class entity in the substrate. It carries the requesting authority's credential, a declaration of the evidence gap (the predicate, the window, the sufficiency deficit), and the policy under which the resulting sensor observations are to be admitted. Sensors do not receive raw commands; they receive observations describing what would close the gap, and they evaluate those observations under the same admissibility framework they use for any other credentialed observation. This is what keeps the loop within the substrate's governance contract: the invocation is not a side channel.

Anchoring is the mechanism by which sensor outputs become part of the substrate. When a sensor responds, its output is wrapped as a credentialed observation that references the originating invocation, carries the sensor's identity credential, and declares its capture parameters. The substrate admits the observation against the same admission policy it applies to any incoming observation; once admitted, the observation is fully fungible with prior substrate content, and the re-run of the original query treats it identically.

Operating Parameters

Several parameters govern when and how invocation may occur. The sufficiency threshold below which invocation is triggered is declared by the consumer of the query, typically as part of the query itself. The set of sensors eligible to receive an invocation is determined by the intersection of declared capability with the spatial-temporal window of the gap, filtered by credentialed addressability. The maximum number of invocations a single query may issue, and the maximum time window within which the loop may iterate, are policy-bounded.

Each sensor's response is governed by its own admissibility parameters. The sensor evaluates the requesting authority's standing under its policy reference, its current operational state and capability headroom, and its declared posture toward sensor-invocation participation. A sensor may admit fully, admit with reduced fidelity, defer, or refuse. Refusal is itself a credentialed observation: the substrate records that the sensor declined, which preserves the auditability of the loop even when no perception was produced.

Cross-authority invocation is parameterized through credentialed cross-recognition. Authority A may issue an invocation that addresses sensors operated under authority B; authority B's sensors evaluate the invocation under their own policy and admit only if cross-recognition is declared. This parameter is what enables coalition operations and inter-organizational coordination without requiring federated identity beyond what the substrate already provides for ordinary observation exchange.

Alternative Embodiments

In a search-and-rescue embodiment, a discovery query for observations of a missing person within a search area may, when existing observations are insufficient, invoke nearby cameras, drones, and personal devices that have declared SAR-participation policies. Each device evaluates the invocation, contributes credentialed observations as appropriate, and the query re-runs as those observations land. The loop iterates within policy-declared bounds until either sufficiency is reached or the iteration limit is exhausted.

In an industrial-incident embodiment, a query for thermal anomalies in a plant section may invoke fixed thermal sensors, mobile inspection units, and operator handhelds within the section. Coordinated perception under credentialed invocation produces a richer evidence base than any single sensor's reading. The same loop semantics apply across the heterogeneous sensor population.

In an environmental-monitoring embodiment, a query about a detected anomaly may invoke spectrum monitors, water-quality probes, and atmospheric stations within the affected region. The invocation observations propagate across organizational boundaries through cross-recognition; sensors operated by different agencies admit the invocation under their respective policies, and contributions are anchored into a shared substrate view that respects each contributor's credentialing.

In a defense ISR embodiment, the loop operates over coalition sensor populations under credentialed invocation. The structural primitive replaces ad-hoc per-sensor tasking with a uniform discovery-driven workflow in which the query expresses the evidence need, the substrate identifies eligible sensors, and admission and contribution are governed by each sensor's own policy. The auditability of the loop is itself a deliverable: every invocation, every admission, every refusal, and every contribution is recorded as a credentialed observation in lineage.

Composition With Discovery and Governance Primitives

The loop composes with the substrate's confidence-governance primitive: the sufficiency threshold that triggers invocation is the same calibrated bound that confidence governance uses to evaluate query results. The loop composes with the credentialing primitive: invocation observations, sensor responses, and refusals all carry credentials that the substrate evaluates under the same admission policy applied to any other observation. The loop composes with the integrity-coherence layer: invocation issued by an agent on behalf of a downstream task passes through the agent's integrity gate before propagation, and incoming sensor observations pass through the gate before admission to the agent's canonical fields.

The loop also composes with policy reference resolution. The decision to invoke at all, the cap on iteration depth, and the declared posture toward cross-authority invocation are all policy-declared. A deployment that wishes to disable invocation entirely simply declares the cap at zero; a deployment that wishes to permit aggressive active discovery declares a higher cap and a permissive cross-recognition posture. The mechanism is not modified; the policy is.

Anchoring composes with the substrate's lineage primitive: every sensor contribution carries a reference to the originating invocation, and the substrate's lineage view exposes the trajectory from initial query through invocation through anchored response through re-run. Auditors can replay the loop end-to-end, and the agent itself can use the lineage to explain why a particular query result was produced.

Distinction From Prior Art

Conventional discovery is passive. A query runs against the existing evidence base, returns whatever is there, and lets the consumer decide what to do. There is no mechanism by which the substrate itself can extend the evidence base in service of the query. Sensor tasking systems exist, but they sit beside discovery rather than within it: an operator separately tasks a sensor, separately collects its output, and separately ingests that output into a search index, with no structural binding between the original query and the eventual ingestion.

Active perception research in robotics has produced single-agent loops in which a planner directs its own sensors to reduce uncertainty in its own world model. The disclosed mechanism is structurally different along two axes. First, it operates at the substrate layer rather than within a single agent's planner, which means the loop coordinates across many sensors and many requesting authorities rather than within a single embodied platform. Second, it preserves credentialed governance throughout: invocation, admission, contribution, and refusal are all credentialed observations under a uniform admission policy, which is what permits cross-organizational operation.

Federated query systems can fan a query out to multiple data sources, but they query existing data; they do not invoke production of new data. The closed loop disclosed here treats invocation of new perception as a structural extension of discovery itself, anchored back into the same substrate, governed by the same primitives.

Disclosure Scope

The Cognition Patent discloses the discovery-driven sensor-invocation closed loop as a structural primitive of the semantic-discovery substrate. The disclosure covers the four-stage loop (query, sufficiency evaluation, governed invocation, anchored contribution and re-run), the credentialed invocation observation, the sensor admissibility evaluation, the cross-authority cross-recognition parameter, and the iteration and policy bounds. It covers composition with confidence governance, credentialing, integrity-coherence, policy reference resolution, and lineage.

The disclosure is substrate-neutral and domain-neutral. Search-and-rescue, industrial-incident response, environmental monitoring, defense ISR, and other coordinated-perception domains are within scope. The mechanism is parameterized through policy, so domain-specific behavior is achieved through configuration rather than through architectural modification, and the same closed loop supports the full range of declared embodiments.

Inside scope: any embodiment in which a discovery query that fails a sufficiency evaluation triggers issuance of a credentialed sensor-invocation observation, in which sensors evaluate that invocation under their own admissibility framework, and in which admitted sensor outputs are anchored back into the discovery substrate and the original query is re-run against the augmented base. Inside scope: embodiments that operate the loop within a single authority and embodiments that operate it across cooperating authorities through credentialed cross-recognition. Inside scope: embodiments that bound iteration depth at zero (effectively disabling invocation) and embodiments that permit multi-iteration loops up to declared policy bounds.

Outside scope: ad-hoc sensor tasking systems that operate beside discovery without structural binding to the originating query. Outside scope: federated query systems that fan out to existing data sources without invoking production of new perception. Outside scope: single-platform active perception planners that operate within one embodied agent without substrate-level coordination across credentialed authorities. The boundary is the closed loop itself: query, governed invocation, anchored contribution, re-run, all under uniform credentialing.

Implementers retain freedom over the specific sufficiency-scoring function, the specific propagation routing for invocation observations, and the specific anchoring representation, provided the four-stage loop and the credentialing contract are preserved. The patent claims the structural primitive, not a specific scoring or routing implementation, so improvements in sufficiency estimation, in sensor selection, or in anchoring efficiency can be incorporated by licensees without renegotiation. What is required is the loop, the credentialing, the policy-declared bounds, and the lineage trajectory from query through invocation through anchored response through re-run.