Project commenced in 2005 and is ongoing.
MECA
| Customer: ESA ESTEC | |
| Partners: TNO D&V, OK Systems, Astrium Space Transporation | |
| The Mission Execution Crew Assistant: research into advanced crew autonomy based on human-machine partnerships |
During human Moon/Mars exploration missions, the current concept of operations, heavily relying on ground control and ground support will no longer be valid due to e.g. the long communication delays. The crew will need to take more autonomous decisions. ESA is interested in boosting the cognitive capacities of human-machine teams during lunar/planetary exploration missions in order to cope autonomously with unexpected, complex and potentially hazardous situations. The Mission Execution Crew Assistant (MECA) project is intended to perform research into advanced crew autonomy based on human-machine partnerships.
S&T helped design and build a proof-of-concept Demonstrator application that was evaluated in a formal test environment in order to evaluate and refine the MECA Requirements Baseline.
The MECA Requirements Baseline and proof-of-concept demonstrator software were successfully developed, tested, evaluated and delivered to the ESA. In two new projects the demonstrator will be further developed to achieve a higher level of operational readiness and become part of experiments on the ISS and terrestrial mission simulations (such as Mars-500).
Links: MECA website