Three NASA Astrobee flying robots operate inside the International Space Station (ISS from the International Space Station) from 2019.
Below we will look at the source code for the Astrobee Robot software, which consists of the flight software that runs on the Astrobee robots, a software simulator, and support tools, mostly written in C++.
Astrobee's flight software performs vision-based tracking, provides autonomous navigation, docking, and manages various sensors and actuators. It supports human-robot interaction with co-located astronauts through displays, light signaling and sound.
The flight software is hosted on each Astrobee's three on-board computers and uses the open source Robot Operating System (ROS) framework as the messaging middleware.
It provides a high-level Astrobee Command API to control the robot and has multiple modes of operation. It can execute a design (command sequence), single operator commands (remote operation), or guest science code running on the Astrobee.
The Astrobee Robot software simulator, built using ROS and Gazebo, allows evaluation of flight software without the need for robot hardware. Support tools include a tool that processes images of the ISS to create maps, among many others.
The separately released Astrobee Ground Data System (GDS) includes Astrobee control station software that communicates with Astrobee flight software via the Data Distribution Service (DDS) network protocol and via the ISS Ku-IP space-to-ground link. The control station is written primarily in Java using the Eclipse RCP framework. The source code is in the astrobee_gds repository or you can download it binary release.
Astrobee robot and ground software were runners-up for the 2020 NASA Software of the Year award!
The Astrobee Robot software is a project in progress. Consult them release notes for the current list of features and limitations.
Instructions on installing and using the Astrobee Robot Software.
