OMC-ARE – On board Model Checking Autonomous Resoning Engine

To meet the needs of future missions and increase their scientific return, space systems will require an increased level of intelligence on-board. Taking autonomous decisions through creating their own plans based on up-to-date information and re-planning in response to unexpected events or anomalous conditions would greatly improve the efficiency of a mission, system safety, and potentially reduce the cost of Ground operations.

The OMC-ARE project is an international research project, carried out by a consortium of Embedded Systems Unit of FBK-irst and Thales Alenia Space, and funded by the European Space Agency.

This project aims at proposing an approach to on-board autonomy, based on model-based reasoning. The approach integrates many important functionalities (such as plan generation, plan execution and monitoring, fault detection identification and recovery (FDIR), and run-time diagnosis) in a uniform framework.

The implementation has been characterized on a LEON processor running the RTEMS operating system, and validated on two case studies (a planetary rover and an orbiting spacecraft), both inspired by real-world, ongoing projects.

This project is the response to ESA/ESTEC ITT AO/1-5184/06/NL/JD – ON BOARD MODEL CHECKING.