Architecture and Tools for Autonomy in Space

Abstract

The LAAS 1 architecture has been developed over the years in a robotic context, to control autonomous robots from the low level control loop up to the mission planning and task execution. It defines a consistent set of methods and tools to enable and ease the integration of such diverse treatments. Similarities between the robotics domain and the space domain seem to indicate that, after being used on mobile robots, the LAAS architecture could now be used onboard satellites and autonomous spacecraft. In particular, we present in detail two components of the architecture which are particularly critical to the space domain: the Faults Detection/Protection system, and the Planning module. For these two components, we also briefly present ongoing works and researches to extend and improve the existing tools and approaches. 1