SARGON - The Space Automation & Robotics General cONtroller

Currently, despite a massive heritage of Open-Source Robot Controller Software (OSRCS) already being available, new Robot Control Operating System (RCOS) are being built from scratch for each robotic mission.

Utilising the OSRCS could support the implementation of an open standard and help to build a large community of users. Ultimately, it could help to reduce future software development costs for robotics missions but currently it hasn’t been developed using space software standards.

But a recently closed TDE activity with GMV, in Spain, has built a new, space-qualified RCOS system  based on existing open-source software and on the TASTE toolset to enable re-using already verified software building blocks in successive robotics mission.

In particular, the operating system, called SARGON, was designed to target three different environments:

• The RCOS Target laboratory: based on a Linux operating system
• The RCOS Target (Hi-reliability) that uses RTEMS as real-time operating system,
• The RCOS Target (Space quality) that uses RTEMS as real-time operating system,

SARGON uses the TASTE framework as a tool to help to design the software architecture and also to compose the elementary components.

A secondary goal of the project was to test the resulting RCOS in robotic applications. ExoMars is a Mars robotic rover scheduled for mission from 2020. ExoTeR is a test rover for the software routines that will be embedded on ExoMars. In the frame of SARGON, a TASTE RCOS application has been implemented, first at a laboratory-level and then at a space-quality level, prototype over ESA’s ExoTeR rover.

This TASTE RCOS test was successful and it now aims to be the base of future European space robotics applications.

All documentation for T313-406MM received in January 2020.