SACSO: Safety Critical Software for Planning in Space Robotics

SACSO DIT-PRJ-02-005

Status NOT active project
DISI role Partner
Project type Research Project
Dimension National
Acquisition date 2002-09-27
Start date 2002-09-27
End date 2003-09-27
SAP code 40100443

Project details

Project astract The SACSO project considers the robotic scenario of the SPIDER arm. Robotic arms are systems intensively used in the International Space Station (ISS) for performing different tasks complying with safety conditions for the robot themselves and the surrounding environment. In the ISS, a wider use of robotic devices is fully justified, due to the high costs of sending human personnel on board for performing any single task. As a consequence, it will be instrumental for the agencies that have payloads on the ISS to provide also the infrastructure for the autonomous operation of many (or all) the tasks included in the deployment of the payload. Examples of SPIDER use mentioned before are the PAT and EUROPA programs, which are entering the operational phase for ASI. The SACSO project has the goal of producing an on-ground facility in which scientists (e.g., expert of the payloads) and technicians (e.g., robot operators) can specify goals (e.g. different experiments on the payloads) for the robotic arm within a high-level specification language. Then, an intelligent software environment supports the users in producing programs that enable the ARM to accomplish the specified goals, and are guaranteed to comply with several constraints, in particular those related with the safety of operations. Similar environments are taken into consideration by other agencies, see for example the VEVI for the Dante II walking robot and VIPER for the Mars Rover. With respect to these two examples, SACSO's emphasis is on the integration of different planners in the supporting environment. In fact, the proposed software environment, referred to as JERRY, uses automated planning techniques to synthesize robot programs.<br/>The software environment is composed by:<br/>- a planner that, starting from a problem specification, produces a plan (i.e. a course of actions) that solves the problem;<br/>- a plan compiler that, starting from a plan, produces a program in the specific robot programming language;<br/>- a software simulator that allows for basic visual inspections of the planning activity, by showing an animation of the execution of the plan in a 3-D reproduction of the ISS scenario;<br/>- an interaction module that allows for a flexible access to the various functions, according to the current focus of attention of the human users.
Keywords robotic scenario, SPIDER arm, Robotic arms, International Space Station
Fundings 120000 €
Partners
  • Università di Roma "La Sapienza'' - Dipartimento di Informatica e Sistemistica
  • DIST Università di Genova
  • IP CNR -ROMA
  • DIT - Università di Trento
  • Universit
  • DIST Universit
  • DIT - Universit

DISI Sub-project details

Project astract DIT has contributed by developing planning techniques, based on the "Planning as model checking approach", which allow to produce plans which are provably correct.
Keywords model checking, planning techniques
Fundings 20000 €
Manager Fausto Giunchiglia