ROS and cFS System (RACS): Easing Space Robotic Development

Space missions have required the development of specific embedded systems for spacecraft applications, making reuse of existing software difficult. JAXA's space robot operating system (SP-ROS) initiative tackles this problem in order to realize more intelligent robotic space missions. JAXA's SP-ROS initiative proposes an open-source software framework for robots used in outer space and will facilitate the development of space robotics through the ROS and cFS system (RACS). This paper introduces RACS and describes a planned demonstration in space. RACS provides two functionalities. The first one is ROS/cFE converter, which makes it possible to directly incorporate the code of a ground robot application into an environment that can be ported as a spacecraft application. The porting of existing robotic applications will aid in developing new applications using ROS's rich development environment. The second functionality of RACS is the ROS/cFE bridge, which allows native cFS and ROS programs to interact. This is aimed mainly at making ground robotics software testing easier. Another benefit would allow ROS's development tools (Rviz and Gazebo) and libraries (OpenCV and MoveIt), as well as packages developed by the roboticists anywhere in the world, to be directly incorporated in the testing. Provided the onboard computer supports cFS, it will be possible to implement these software packages into space robots. JAXA has made the open-source RACS module available to everybody. We currently propose to test the system in a space demonstration using Int-Ball2, a space drone in the International Space Station (ISS).