Through the Space Robotics Technologies Strategic Research Cluster (SRC), the European Commission’s goal is to enable major advances in space robotic technologies for future on-orbit satellite servicing and for the exploration of the surfaces of the other bodies in our solar system.
In the current first stage of the SRC implementation, a number of parallel operational grants have been financed, that aim at producing a number of validated common robotics building blocks, whichwill be re-used and integrated for future space robotics missions.
The goal of FACILITATORS project (OG6) has been to provide the means and facilities so that the building blocks that are produced by each OG (1 to 5) can be correctly validated, and more specifically:
• Enabling the highest possible level of validation of the common building blocks (to be developed by all the other operational grants) in the most relevant environment by adapting and providing the best available European test facilities needed by each technology or combination of technologies/domains (with minimal duplication of means and activities), as well as
• Guaranteeing coherence among the different test facilities and among the building blocks by establishing common implementation/validation scenarios (to be reproduced during ground testing) and common interfaces with the test facilities.
The project has been named FACILITATORS: FACILIties for Testing (at) ORbital and Surface robotics building blocks. The name would like to stress that our project allows maximising the outputs of the other building blocks, as the definition of our acronym reads:
facilitator: one that helps to bring about an outcome (as learning, productivity, or communication) by providing indirect or unobtrusive assistance, guidance, or supervision
[Definition: Mirriam Webster Dictionary].
While each OG realizes an independent verification and validation, FACILITATORS have closely worked with the other OGs in order to allow that the specific validation needs, up to system level while in relation to selected demonstration scenario, can be covered by the facilities that have been made available.