Toward Robust Task Execution through Telerobotic Failure Recovery in Space Operations

Abstract

Robotics will continue to be essential for future space missions, supporting exploration, construction, and mainte-nance on distant celestial bodies. However, instructing these systems from Earth is challenging because of communication de-lays and environmental uncertainties. A more suitable approach involves commanding robots from orbit. This setup reduces the time delay between operator and robot allowing for more detailed robot commands up the way to direct teleoperation. The Surface Avatar experiment explores mission scenarios of human-robot team collaboration, where communication time delays are under several seconds. This allows for significantly more complex tasks with human-in-the-Ioop execution. In our mission design, a team of heterogeneous robots on Earth is controlled from the International Space Station (ISS) using Scal-able Autonomy, balancing autonomous execution with human intervention. In this paper, we propose a recovery method where robots autonomously detect issues and request astronaut or ground control support to address task failures. This frees the astronaut from constant supervision. One way to use the newly gained time is to switch focus on commanding another robot. Our framework is validated in a Martian surface mock-up environment during an ISS-to-earth experiment session, demonstrating its effectiveness for future missions.