Accelerating Space Robot Operating System for a Sustainable Lunar Future

Earlier space robotics missions relied on bespoke development of hardware and software, which is expensive and does not lend itself to software interoperability or sustained collaborative operations. Many terrestrial robots are built on the Robot Operating System (ROS). ROS provides a common software infrastructure that enables interoperability between different robot hardware components and software systems from different vendors. By providing common infrastructure and tools, robots can be built more quickly and reuse software components. Work has already begun to bring these ROS concepts to space, in an international open source effort called Space ROS. Space ROS will be a key factor in building a sustainable lunar surface ecosystem that efficiently re-uses assets for rapid evolution of missions. Once Space ROS has flight heritage and has been established as certifiable software, it will be possible to apply it to any number of applications for Moon to Mars missions, and beyond. Space ROS will enable both more robots to be built for less money, but also the ability for sustained collaborative operations in space environments. The goal of this phase is to boost Space ROS’s momentum in the community, demonstrate capabilities by pairing with cFS for control, and provide a space-focused test harness. We will provide a showcase for existing functionality, integrate third party software, and test Space ROS in a hybrid autonomy environment designed for space robot operators. A key outcome of this Phase 1 will be accelerating the adoption of Space ROS by at least 1 year. Our software platform, MoveIt Pro, is the primary way to monetize our work on Space ROS, and Space ROS is key to elevating the TRL and utility of MoveIt Pro for space. MoveIt Pro serves automation and robotic needs in the emerging areas of CLD, ISAM/SAML, ADR, lunar and planetary missions. The space robotics market is estimated to have a total addressable market (TAM) of $58B by 2030.

The Artemis program’s mission to return to the Moon and establish a long-term presence includes the need for a wide array of robotic systems that will benefit from the software interoperability that Space ROS will provide. Construction and maintenance of the Artemis Base Camp requires extensive labor, and robots will be required to perform lunar tasks to assist astronauts. One major need will be In-Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU), to allow NASA missions to go further and achieve more because it won’t be necessary to bring everything from Earth’s gravity well. Successful ISRU will assist astronauts in extracting, transporting, loading, unloading, and processing resources in lunar and planetary environments. Once Space ROS has flight heritage and has been established as certifiable software, it will be possible to apply it to any number of applications for Moon to Mars missions, and beyond. These additional use cases include communicating from a central system to a number of low powered IoT devices in the field potentially running an embedded variant of ROS. Low-power distributed systems could be used to collect data from environmental sensors in human habitats and on the lunar or martian surface to inform robotic ISRU and habitation caretaking actions. Space ROS will enable both more robots to be built for less money, but also the ability for sustained collaborative operations in space environments. PickNik has been in regular communication with all of the key stakeholders in the development of Space ROS, including NASA Ames Research Center, NASA Johnson Space Center, Open Robotics, and Blue Origin. Under a contract with Blue Origin in 2021, PickNik developed a concept of operations for flight certification of MoveIt3, the widely used robotic arm motion planning and manipulation framework PickNik and other industry contributors built on top of ROS. Since then, PickNik has been organizing a volunteer group of contributors to the Space ROS project, and spreading awareness of the program through conference talks, online community meetings, and a shared Slack channel for technical collaboration. Space ROS can help create an ecosystem of robotic parts and subsystems like space-hardened sensors, motors, and computing units that come pre-configured. This will be a big step into a self-sustaining commercial ecosystem that works collaboratively with NASA and the other space agencies, but does not require continued government funding. Companies like PickNik are already helping build this ecosystem with their modular, flight ready software MoveIt Pro Space designed to bring AI to space robotic manipulators for both groups like NASA and commercial space companies like Motiv Space Systems and Arka (both current customers of PickNik). Once such an ecosystem is in place, the time to develop a robotic space mission will be condensed by assembling as many off-the-self, space-rated parts as are available. Commercial robotics teams will have much more time to focus on specialized use, fine tuning for custom tasks, conducting science, building infrastructure, and adding flexibility and redundancy to the system.

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