Survey of Command Execution Systems for NASA Spacecraft and Robots

NASA spacecraft and robots operate at long distances from Earth Command sequences generated manually, or by automated planners on Earth, must eventually be executed autonomously onboard the spacecraft or robot. Software systems that execute commands onboard are known variously as execution systems, virtual machines, or sequence engines. Every robotic system requires some sort of execution system, but the level of autonomy and type of control they are designed for varies greatly. This paper presents a survey of execution systems with a focus on systems relevant to NASA missions.

[1]  M.P. Georgeff,et al.  Procedural knowledge , 1986, Proceedings of the IEEE.

[2]  Drew McDermott,et al.  A reactive plan language , 1991 .

[3]  Smadar Kedar,et al.  The entropy reduction engine: integrating planning, scheduling, and control , 1991, SGAR.

[4]  Michael Beetz,et al.  Declarative goals in reactive plans , 1992 .

[5]  Richard Levinson,et al.  A General Programming Language for Unified Planning and Control , 1995, Artif. Intell..

[6]  Erann Gat,et al.  Remote agent prototype for spacecraft autonomy , 1996, Optics & Photonics.

[7]  Rachid Alami,et al.  PRS: a high level supervision and control language for autonomous mobile robots , 1996, Proceedings of IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation.

[8]  Bernard Espiau,et al.  ORCCAD: software engineering for real-time robotics. A technical insight , 1997, Robotica.

[9]  Erann Gat,et al.  ESL: a language for supporting robust plan execution in embedded autonomous agents , 1997, 1997 IEEE Aerospace Conference.

[10]  Reid G. Simmons,et al.  A task description language for robot control , 1998, Proceedings. 1998 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems. Innovations in Theory, Practice and Applications (Cat. No.98CH36190).

[11]  A Hybrid Procedural/Deductive Executive for Autonomous Spacecraft , 1999, AGENTS '98.

[12]  Michael Freed,et al.  Managing Multiple Tasks in Complex, Dynamic Environments , 1998, AAAI/IAAI.

[13]  Tara Estlin,et al.  The CLARAty architecture for robotic autonomy , 2001, 2001 IEEE Aerospace Conference Proceedings (Cat. No.01TH8542).

[14]  Mark Abramson,et al.  Executing Reactive, Model-based Programs through Graph-based Temporal Planning , 2001, IJCAI.

[15]  Nicola Muscettola,et al.  IDEA: Planning at the Core of Autonomous Reactive Agents , 2002 .

[16]  C. A. Grasso,et al.  The fully programmable spacecraft: procedural sequencing for JPL deep space missions using VML (Virtual Machine Language) , 2002, Proceedings, IEEE Aerospace Conference.

[17]  David E. Smith,et al.  Incremental Contingency Planning , 2003 .

[18]  Anthony Stentz,et al.  Market-Based Multi-Robot Planning in a Distributed Layered Architecture , 2003 .

[19]  Brian C. Williams,et al.  Model-based programming of intelligent embedded systems and robotic space explorers , 2003, Proc. IEEE.

[20]  Anthony Barrett,et al.  Mission planning and execution within the Mission Data System , 2004 .

[21]  Brian C. Williams,et al.  Model-Based Programming of Fault-Aware Systems , 2004, AI Mag..

[22]  Jeremy Frank,et al.  Constraint-Based Attribute and Interval Planning , 2003, Constraints.

[23]  T. Estlin,et al.  Enabling autonomous rover science through dynamic planning and scheduling , 2005, 2005 IEEE Aerospace Conference.

[24]  R. Sargent,et al.  Mission planning and target tracking for autonomous instrument placement , 2005, 2005 IEEE Aerospace Conference.

[25]  Richard Levinson,et al.  Unified Planning and Execution for Autonomous Software Repair , 2005 .