Robotic space exploration still relies to main parts on manual interaction between operators and remotely exploring systems. Meanwhile, space agencies are under "pressure to reduce manpower during routine mission operations", and the application of autonomous systems shows a potential approach to reduce this pressure. Nevertheless, space agencies are reluctant to applying autonomous systems -- mainly since safety estimates are difficult to provide when robotic systems are operating autonomously.
This talk will outline a concept on how to increase operation safety and efficiency by applying autonomously operating reconfigurable multi-robot systems for space exploration.
The main advantage expected by employing reconfigurable systems is their flexibility to reuse and share existing resources within the overall system. Introducing an appropriate system model intends to permit exploitation of this flexibility by providing a tool for offline and online state description. This state description can subsequently be used for
monitoring and optimization of operation safety and efficiency. In order to evaluate the quality and practicality of the model -- and encourage an application of reconfigurable multi-robot systems in space -- evaluation criteria and validation scenarios will be presented.
Note, that the talk discusses a concept along with evaluation criteria -- it does not provide quantitative results on an implemented solution.