1.5 User Requirements

At the highest strategic level, OSAT works with the user offices to develop an annual technology plan in support of the civil space program. The plans serves to describe the strategic direction for the OSAT space research and technology programs, and as a strategic planning framework for other NASA and national participants in advocating and conducting technology developments that support future U.S. civil space missions. The integration of strategic requirements, directions and goals for the Space Telerobotics Program is incorporated within the planning process.

The plan is revised annually to reflect changes in mission planning, approval of new focussed and research base efforts, and progress in ongoing technology development efforts. Moreover, both the plan and derived OSAT space technology programs are subjected to annual external and internal review to ensure continuing quality and relevance. In the case of the Telerobotics Program, that includes full involvement of the user communities (industry, university, and NASA) with the program as advocates, advisors, and requirements providers.

In addition to the formal submission of requirements from the user program offices to OSAT via the strategic planning process, each user organization works informally with the Telerobotics Program at a more detailed level to transmit requirements to, and receive technology products from the program. This interchange typically takes place as part of the activities of the Telerobotics Intercenter Working Group (TRIWG), which actively guides the direction and strategy of the Telerobotics Program. The TRIWG consists of representatives from each organization participating in the Telerobotics Program, and meets quarterly to provide direction on the content and focus of the program. The TRIWG performs detailed technical reviews of the ongoing technology and application tasks, and coordinates the transfer of this technology to the user organizations. At each meeting, representatives of the user organizations are present to update the formal technology requirements and assess how the Telerobotics Program is responding to these requirements.

As these updated technology requirements are passed to the Telerobotics Program each year, the program is reassessed to determine the correlation between the requirements and the planned developments of the program. If appropriate, new tasks are initiated in the program to address new technology needs, or existing tasks may be re-targeted. At any given time, approximately 80% of the tasks within the program are targeted to address specific user requirements aligned with a specific planned mission (this is the "technology pull" portion of the program). The remaining 20% of the program is composed of tasks which address new innovative technologies. These technologies have been identified by the program as having a potential to significantly advance the state of the art, and worth investigating without a pre-identified user requirement (this is the "technology push" portion of the program).

The anticipated robotics requirements forwarded by the user offices to the Telerobotics Program during this past year are summarized in Figure 1-2.

	Space Flight and Space Station:	Space Science:	Mission From Planet Earth*:	Life and Microgravity Science:
Requirements:	robot alignment systems	low mass and volume planetary surface rovers	robotic vision and perception systems	automation to reduce crew interaction
	improved system performance and response times	local rovers (<100m range) with multi-day lifetime	advanced proximity sensing systems	hazardous materials handling mitigation
	collision avoidance	autonomous and semi-autonomous operation	advanced dexterous end-effectors	ampoule rupture detection
	command and control interfaces	improved system robustness	high-efficiency, long term lubrication for actuators	high levels of autonomy
	ground control	reduced operator command cycles
	visual inspection	improved sensing and representation of state and worksite
	increased utilization of autonomy	miniaturized sensing and computing systems
	automated leak detection	simplified control approaches for small mobile systems
	robotic tooling	improved system dexterity and contact motion control
	fault tolerant architectures	terrain mapping and matching
	robotic system dexterity
	verification testbeds and simulation facilities
	enhanced manipulator control
Applicable Missions:	Space Station Alpha maintenance	Mars Pathfinder	Artemis	SpaceLab experiments
	Space Station Alpha operations	Mars Surveyor	First Lunar Outpost	Space Station experiments
	on-orbit vehicle assembly and processing	Mars Sample Return	Mars exploration	Biotechnology and materials science payloads
		Venus Landed Systems (Discovery)	Permanently Manned Lunar and Mars Missions
		Advanced robot surface systems
Challenges:	multi-arm coordinated cooperative control	physical contact with planetary surfaces	unknown dust contamination characteristics	ultra safe operations in close proximity to humans
	reduced on-orbit computational capability	uncertain knowledge of operating environment	low mass and volume constraints	long operational phases
	computation or communications-induced time delays	long operational phases	long-duration pre-deployment storage	low- to no-maintenance operations
	operational flexibiliity	radical reduction of life-cycle costs	low- to no-maintenance operations	flexibility to cope with unexpected experimental procedures
	lengthly robotic task timelines	multiple concurrent missions
	low-maintenance operations	very high data rate science payloads
	human safety considerations	high speed simulation of complex systems
	reduction of EVA time

Figure 1-2 Current Space Telerobotics User Requirements

(* Note that NASA's Office of Exploration has been reorganized into the Office of Space Science (OSS). A Mission from Planet Earth (MFPE) Study Office has been established within OSS and charged with identifying the long-range goals for space exploration and development, including human exploration.)

The requirements described in this table represent data collected from the associated program offices during the annual "User Requirements" meeting of the TRIWG, held each fall. This data was presented by each program office as representative of their technology needs based on their mission plans at that time. The technology needs for the Office of Space Flight are further defined in the joint Space Station/Office of Space Access and Technology "Robotics Technology Study" conducted in 1993 and 1994.