Search NASA⌕ Search
Home/Archive/NASA NTRS

NASA NTRS · 20180003515

Astrobee Robot Software: A Modern Software System for Space

Fluckiger, Lorenzo·Browne, Kathryn·Coltin, Brian·Fusco, Jesse·Morse, Theodore·Symington, Andrew
View original source ↗Export metadata ↓

Abstract

Astrobee is a new free-flyer robot designed to operate inside the International Space Station (ISS). Astrobee capabilities include markerless navigation, autonomous docking for recharge, perching on handrails to minimize power and modular payloads. Astrobee will operate without crew support, controlled by teleoperation, plan execution, or on-board third parties software. This paper presents the Astrobee Robot Software, a NASA Open-Source project, powering the Astrobee robot. The Astrobee Robot Software relies on a distributed architecture based on the Robot Operating System (ROS). The software runs on three interconnected smart phone class processors. We present the software approach, infrastructure required, and main software components. The Astrobee Robot Software embrace modern software practices while respecting flight constraints. The paper concludes with the lessons learned, including examples usage of the software. Several research teams are already using the Astrobee Robot Software to develop novel projects that will fly on Astrobee.

Explore related subjects

AstrobeeROSSoftwareISSRobot

Keep this discovery

Explore connections, maps & timelines

BibTeXRIS

Fluckiger, Lorenzo, Browne, Kathryn, Coltin, Brian, Fusco, Jesse, Morse, Theodore, Symington, Andrew. 2018-06-04. Astrobee Robot Software: A Modern Software System for Space. https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/20180003515

Cite the original work for its findings. Save a collection to share your selection of sources.

KEEP EXPLORING

Related reports

NASA NTRS2020

Kibo Robot Programming Challenge Final Activity Report

On October 8th, 2020 the Kibo Robot Programming Challenge (RPC) Finals Event took place. Student teams from Australia, Indonesia, Japan, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, and UAE were the finalists of the competition and became the first students to ever upload APKs to an Astrobee robot (Bumble) on the ISS. This was the culmination of a joint effort between JAXA’s Int-Ball developing team in Tsukuba, Japan and NASA’s Astrobee Facility team at NASA Ames Research Center\ in California, USA. The collaboration between JAXA and NASA started in late 2017. Throughout this time mutual visits by the engineering and management teams were organized. In July 2019 the Kibo RPC concept was formally defined and the competition started. Hundreds of students across the Asia Pacific region participated and during the final event they did so in real time with the participation of NASA’s astronaut, Chris Cassidy. Chris interacted with the students, JAXA personnel and with the robot during the activity. This report aims to summarize the lessons learned from the several crew and non-crew tended activities, the evaluations performed on ground, the coordination of resources both in the ground and at the International Space Station (ISS) as well as operations. It identifies the issues the teams faced and the solutions put in place to mitigate them.

Astrobee↗