# the cognitive operating loop

OSTVAL™ — the cognition runtime of VAOS

OSTVAL stands for Observe · Structure · Think · Validate · Act · Learn. It is the six-stage operating loop that turns sensor pixels into validated, auditable action — and the formal kernel inside every VAOS deployment.

See the architecture→ Scene Contract
VAOS is an OSTVAL runtime. OSTVAL is the cognitive operating loop of VAOS. Every camera, robot, or edge agent built on VAOS runs the same six-step closed loop — locally, deterministically, and under a validation envelope before any action is taken.
# the six stages

One loop. Six verbs.

Each stage produces a formal artifact that feeds the next. The loop is local, sensor-aware, and validation-gated.

👁️

Observe

Acquire raw signal — frames, depth, audio, IMU, time. VAOS knows what each sensor is and how reliable it is right now.

St, Et
🗺️

Structure

Pixels become a queryable scene — objects, regions, events, sensor reliability scores. Pure perception ends here.

vaos.scene
🧠

Think

Reason over the scene against persistent memory and site context. SceneLM / agent policies run in this stage.

Mt
🛡️

Validate

Score confidence from sensor reliability, scene quality, memory consistency, and human policy. Action only if validation passes.

Cv
⚡

Act

Emit gated commands — robot moves, API calls, dashboard alerts, MQTT events. Every act carries its validation envelope.

Vt
💾

Learn

Record outcomes into local persistent memory. Sites learn themselves; the next loop is informed by every previous one.

St+1
# formal model

The OSTVAL equations

A small, audit-ready model. Six verbs, five symbols, one closed loop.

Observe / Structure
St, Et = Φ(sensor, environment)

The structured scene state St and the environment context Et at time t, derived from sensors with explicit reliability scoring.

Think
Rt = Ψ(St, Mt, Tt)

Reasoning Rt is a function of the scene, persistent memory Mt, and temporal context Tt. SceneLM and agent policies live here.

Validate · patent pending
Cv = α·Cs + β·Cm + γ·Ct + δ·Ch

Action confidence is a weighted sum — sensor reliability Cs, memory consistency Cm, temporal stability Ct, human policy fit Ch. The validation envelope of VAOS.

Act
At = π(Rt) · 𝟙[Cv ≥ τ]

An action At is emitted by policy π only if the validation score crosses threshold τ. Below threshold, the loop yields a no-op + diagnostic.

Learn
St+1 = f(St, Et, Mt, Vt)

The next state is a function of current scene, environment, memory, and the validated outcome Vt. Persistent local learning, no cloud round-trip required.

Bias / anomaly awareness
De = | Eo − Eh |

Drift De is the magnitude of difference between observed environment Eo and historical baseline Eh — surface anomalies, recalibrations, or regime shifts.

# why this matters

Cognition you can audit

📐

Formal, not folkloric

OSTVAL is a stated model. Every stage has an input, an output, and a confidence — so every decision can be replayed, traced, and verified.

🛡️

Validation-gated action

Nothing leaves the runtime without crossing the validation threshold. Robots, dashboards, and APIs only see actions that passed the envelope.

🧠

Local memory, persistent learning

Sites accumulate context over time. The same camera at the same site becomes more accurate week after week — without sending data to a cloud.

Run OSTVAL on your hardware.

Five lines of Python. Any RK3588, Jetson, or x86 box. Local cognition with a validation envelope.

5-min quickstart→ Full architecture Read the whitepaper