MAPGEN

MAPGEN is a combination of two separate software packages: APGEN, which was developed at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and EUROPA, a technology developed by RIACS in conjuncation with the NASA Intelligent Systems Division.

Constraint-based planning provides many advantages, including considerable flexibility in validating activity plans.

EUROPA is an operations planning system that allows for the rapid and efficient development of activity plans. These activity plans can then be utilized by spacecraft and other systems to perform a wide variety of operations.

In EUROPA, the activities which make up an activity plan are represented as intervals. Each interval has a beginning and end for its specified activity, as well as operational parameters. These intervals, along with their parameters, are then linked together to create a constraint network. For any given candidate activity plan, the underlying constraint network is checked to ensure that none of the constraints are violated. If the network is inconsistent, the candidate plan can not become a validated plan, thus ensuring that an automated process does not cause a robot or machine to operate outside of it's flight rules. It is also important to note that constraints can be automatically updated to enforce the various rules and restrictions applicable to the plan in question.

EUROPA's intervals can be linked to transactions on numerical and state resources. Each interval can potentially increase the usage of a machine's resources, such as power and data memory. As intervals are combined to form an activity plan, resource usage is calculated and validated against a resource usage boundary for a given period of time. By efficiently assembling intervals, EUROPA can also maximize the quality of an activity plan which can be performed by a robot or machine within its given operational limitations.

Driving the development of constraint-based planning is the need for autonomous planning capabilities for spacecraft, robots and machines. Particularly in space operations, spacecraft and robots need to be more self-sufficient and have the ability to create and process operations plans on their own. This will significantly decrease the number of humans required to monitor and operate rovers and dramatically lower the cost of mission operations.

Automated operations planning can provide significant value in a broad array of domains here on Earth.

For example, a EUROPA based system could provide air traffic controllers with a tool to more efficiently route and order aircraft, increasing safety and reducing flight costs. For airlines, EUROPA could be applied to the complex task of planning flight routes and aircraft availability, leading to a significant reduction in operational costs.

Other environments where EUROPA could add significant operational efficiency include Earth-orbiting satellites and ground-based communications systems, or any type of environment which is dependent on a large number of complex, concurrent, time and resource constrained activities.

In the future, spacecraft and other systems will be far less dependent on their human controllers than they are today. Fully automated planning and scheduling will allow these systems to operate independently based on high level interaction with humans. They will be able to decide themselves what detailed steps are required to safely complete the tasks they are asked to perform. These autonomous capabilities are a critical component of NASA's Exploration Vision, where automated systems operations will reduce costs and increase reliability, and where robotic systems will perform surveying, inspection and a variety of other tasks in Earth orbit, on the Moon and Mars.