Project commenced in 2005, completed in 2007.
AHCI/SCOPE
| Customer: ESA ESTEC |
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| Partners: TNO D&V, TNO BMI | |
| Supporting Crew OPErations |
Time is a scarce and expensive resource aboard challenging scientific environments such as the International Space Station (ISS). The training and preparation of astronauts for on-board missions can take up a large amount of this resource, as do the actual maintenance, operation and troubleshooting involved with such missions. The ESA is researching ways in which a more efficient, effective, and easy to learn human operation can be realized.
S[&]T was the technical lead for the Advanced HCI Crew Informatics project (AHCI). In AHCI an operation-centred software engineering design method was developed, taking human activities regarding the execution of an experiment as a basis for the interface between the human and the experiment control hardware and software. S[&]T built a generic application framework for supervising the execution of such experiments, called SCOPE (Supporting Crew OPErations), and used it to implement support for two experimental payloads.
The research performed in AHCI has formed a basis for further evolution of ESA’s thinking on astronaut support and astronomy. The SCOPE software continues to be used as a component or implementation vehicle for other projects (such as MECA).