Potential NASA Commercial Applications: The proposed xPACE software has relevance to both near-term and long-term NASA human-robot missions. Near-term, the human operator will tele-operate the robot from a remote location, as proposed for the Resource Prospector mission. For such missions, xPACE improves the remote operator's ability to quickly produce safer, more effective plans when replanning during operations. Longer term, the crew will manage robots operating more autonomously. Such management requires the human operator to plan the activities of one or more robots, direct the execution of the resulting task sequences, and adapt plans when problems or opportunities arrive. For such missions, xPACE can help crew compare plans from different perspectives to reveal plan strengths and weaknesses. The software also will support modifying plan parameters to improve plan effectiveness and reduce plan risks.
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