ESROCOS proposal aims to develop a system with the following main objectives:
- Develop a Space-oriented RCOS: ESROCOS shall target space development needs by including space-grade RAMS attributes (refer to ESA ECSS standards) and off-line/on-line formal verification, Telemetry and Telecommand (TM/TC) messages and qualification of industrial drivers such as the Controller Area Network (CAN) bus or EtherCAT protocols. Two reference implementations shall be carried out on space representative avionics.
- Integrate advanced modelling technologies: ESROCOS shall include complete model-based methodology [RD.5] supporting the design of the individual components as well as the interfaces for their interaction and integration, the verification of the structural and behavioural properties at the system level, and a framework that also provides glue code generation. This approach allows the separation of the model from the target platform, which is a requirement for the reuse of the software in future developments
- Focus on the space robotics community: ESROCOS requirements will be consolidated by actors leading state-of-the art robotics space missions.
- Allow integration of complex robotics applications: ESROCOS shall provide a flexible architecture, following the Time and Space Partitioning and mixed-criticality approach [RD.17], which also allows hosting different level of space quality applications over the same on-board computer.
- Avoid vendor-lock in situations: The outcome of the proposal is to be delivered as open-source code (Mozilla Public License, Apache, MIT, BSD and GPL/LGPL), avoiding proprietary solutions (VxWorks, PykeOS) that can have difficulties in being adopted,
- Leverage on existing assets: Instead of starting from scratch, ESROCOS shall enhance already existing frameworks (TASTE [RD.6] extended with a robotics components approach inspired by the Rock middleware), mature toolsets (source-code versioning, scripting/testing, visualizers/simulators) and libraries (advanced data types, robotics transformations of reference systems, robotic arm kinematics and dynamics, rover locomotion control)
- Ease the development of robotics systems: ESROCOS shall be interoperable with other robotics frameworks (e.g. Rock/ROS 3rd party libraries and visualizers/simulator) allowing testing their algorithms together with space critical components
- Cross-pollinate with non-space solutions and applications: ESROCOS shall benefit from the experience gathered in developing RCOS for robots in nuclear environment, with very stringent RAMS requirements
