DISCO-RECOVERY: The Recursive Organization of Dynamical Systems in Vehicular Caretaking

The next generation of NASA missions such as Gateway will benefit from having effective intravehicular (IVA) robotic caretakers that can support science operations and can tend to the spacecraft when only intermittently crewed. While a number of NASA robotic systems such as Astrobee or Robonaut 2 have been developed to function as such potential caretakers, many technical questions remain on how to effectively coordinate their activities in conjunction with each other, with the spacecraft command and controls systems (environmental, power, avionics, thermal, propulsion, etc.), and with the activities of human crew (when available). nbsp;In response to this need, TRACLabs proposes to develop a software framework that draws upon principles of dynamical systems theory to ground ontological representations that can support autonomous caretaking and payload activities. nbsp;We call this system DISCO-RECOVERY (DISCrete-event Ontology for the RECursive Organization of VEhicular amp; Robotic activitY). nbsp;The goal of this work will be to investigate how these typically disparate formalisms can complement each other and support a common framework for expressing the behavior of the systems (robots and spacecraft) that must be coordinated to ensure proper operation.nbsp;