Autonomous And/or Interactive Constraints-based Software Reconfiguration for Planetary Rover

Following our experience in the development of ExOS, the RTAI/Linux-based real-time operating system for the planetary rover ExoMaDeR, we realized that the management of onboard software configuration requires more powerful capabilities than those currently available, especially to react autonomously and in real-time to unexpected events, e.g. faults. Autonomous dynamic software reconfiguration is a powerful fault management technique used in real-time safety-critical systems (e.g. military aircraft) to mitigate the effects of unexpected events. In this paper we propose a novel autonomous software reconfiguration system for the planetary rover based on the Constraint Programming paradigm. Our approach is able to dynamically merge heterogeneous information that is relevant for this critical but powerful operation. Key parameters are faults, rover operating mode, mission objectives, redundancy requirements and safety requirements. We also extend our system framework to interactive scenarios, where a human operator expresses preferences on the reconfiguration and fault management processes. This feature is particularly useful during rover teleoperation. In order to produce situational awareness for the operator, our system is able to automatically generate explanations of autonomous reconfiguration and fault containment actions in real-time. Our research is addressing ways of making the explanations readily understood by the operator.