On 23 and 24 May GMV’s Madrid head office hosted the System Requirements Review meeting of the European PRO-ACT project (Planetary RObots Deployed for Assembly and Construction Tasks).

PRO-ACT is one of the 5 projects selected for European-Commission funding in the second phase of the space robotics Strategic Research Cluster (SRC), the European Commission’s biggest robotics program.

The program’s second phase sets out to integrate, reuse, adapt or extend the common technology building blocks previously developed in on-ground demonstrators in the first phase. This will help to drive the development of future space robotics applications for orbital and planetary use (phase 0/A studies) to meet not only the future needs of space exploration and exploitation but also potential spin-off and spill-over effects to other areas of robotics activity on Earth.

The PRO-ACT project, run by a 9-partner consortium primed by Space Applications Services, addresses the problem of a precursor lunar base by assembling an in-situ resource utilization (ISRU) system, doing so with the aid of cooperatively acting mobile robots. These capabilities will be essential for the establishment of future human settlements.

PRO-ACT will be using all the common building blocks (OG1-5) developed during the first phase of the program, pride of place going to European Robotic Goal-oriented Autonomous Controller (ERGO) and the European Space Robot Control Operating System (ESROCOS); the two GMV-led building blocks in the cluster’s first phase.

GMV is also participating in multi-robot architecture definition (planning /monitoring/execution); in the development of support systems (communications, control center and ground monitoring); in the integration of common building blocks developed in the first phase plus testing activities and bringing result to wider notice.

The meeting, including consortium partners and representatives of the European Commission (EC) and Programme Support Activity (PSA), set out to take stock of the reuse of previously developed common building blocks and their applicability in the establishment of PRO-ACT.