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EDORAS: Easing the Development of Robot Applications for Space Missions

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NASA-SBIR-158271SBIR / STTR

Contract Overview

Solicitation details, issuing organization, response deadlines, documents, and interested companies for this government contract opportunity.

AI Contract Overview

TRACLabs is developing EDORAS, a set of software tools designed to streamline the integration of ROS 2-based robotics applications with flight software to support NASA's goals for sustained lunar and deep space presence. Rather than acting as a bridge itself, EDORAS provides high-level libraries that automate the conversion of message types and manage the transmission of large data sets within the bandwidth constraints of flight systems. This initiative aims to reduce development time by allowing terrestrial robotics tools for perception, planning, and machine learning to be more easily adapted for safety-critical space mission subsystems. This project, identified by solicitation number NASA-SBIR-158271, is a total small business set-aside under the NASA SBIR/STTR Program. The technology is expected to benefit various NASA efforts, including Artemis and lunar surface operations, as well as commercial partners such as Blue Origin, Astrobotic, and Intuitive Machines. The performance of the contract is centered in Moffett Field, California, with oversight provided by the NASA SBIR/STTR Program.

General Info

TRACLabs develops EDORAS software to integrate ROS 2 robotics with NASA flight systems.

Agency

National Aeronautics and Space Administration → NASA SBIR/STTR Program

NAICS

541511 - Custom Computer Programming Services

Place of Performance

Moffett Field, CA, 94035, USA

Set-Aside

SBA

Documents

No documents available

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Timeline

PhaseSolicitation

PostedAug 7

Solicitation

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Organization & Contact Information

AgencyNational Aeronautics and Space Administration → NASA SBIR/STTR Program

Contacts5 people available

OfficeUSA

Organization / AgencyNational Aeronautics and Space Administration → NASA SBIR/STTR Program

Office AddressUSA

Contacts

Bruce DunsonPrimary Point of Contact

Jose V BenavidesProject Manager

contact@example.gov

Ana C Huaman QuispePrincipal Investigator

Jason L KesslerProgram Director

contact@example.gov

Carlos TorrezProgram Manager

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Interested Companies (1)

TRACLabsWebster, TX

Full Description

In order to address NASA's goals to establish a sustained presence in the Moon and beyond, there is the need for closer integration between robot and flight software, in order to take advantage of the state-of-the-art robot application tools, usually available as ROS 2-based libraries, and allow them to operate on space missions. During the last few years in particular, bridges between ROS 2 and cFS have been created such that they enable both frameworks to operate together. In this project, TRACLabs proposes to implement a set of software tools that eases the adaptation modifications that are often needed to efficiently integrate ROS 2 applications with flight software. Our main goal is to reduce development time by providing reusable, configurable libraries that make it easy for a robotics developer to adapt their existing (terrestrial) robot applications to be suitable for integration with flight software with its accompanying constraints. We call these tools EDORAS (Easing the Development of Robot Applications for Space Missions). To clarify, EDORAS is not a bridge; rather, it is a set of tools that can be used at a high-level (on top of an existing bridge) to reduce the overhead of adapting existing robot applications by providing tools to automate the conversion from ROS 2 to cFS message types, and providing tools to address the particular needs of the transmission of large message types, if they need to be transferred, considering the bandwidth limitations of the flight system.
Benefits: EDORAS has the potential to have large impact across a broad collection of various NASA efforts involving robot and autonomous operations technologies including ISAM, lunar surface operations, and Artemis by providing the ability to integrate state-of-the-art robotics software tools for perception, planning, navigation, user-interfaces and machine learning developed in ROS 2 with the mission-specific safety-critical software subsystems. The capabilities enabled by EDORAS are of direct interest to a variety of commercial space efforts led by companies such as Astrobotic, Blue Origin and Intuitive Machines, which aim to deploy robotic systems to operate, maintain and support orbital and surface spacecraft.