Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Capturing autonomy features for unmanned spacecraft with ARE, the autonomy requirements engineering approach

  • Original Paper
  • Published:
Innovations in Systems and Software Engineering Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Along with the traditional requirements, requirements engineering for autonomous and self-adaptive systems needs to address requirements related to adaptation issues, in particular: (1) what adaptations are possible; (2) under what constrains; and (3) how those adaptations are realized. Note that adaptations arise when a system needs to cope with changes to ensure realization of the system’s objectives. The autonomy requirements engineering approach converts adaptation issues into autonomy features where goal-oriented requirements engineering is used along with a model for generic autonomy requirements. The approach is intended to help engineers develop missions for unmanned exploration, often with limited or no human control.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. Vassev E, Hinchey M (2013) On the autonomy requirements for space missions. In: Proceedings of the 16th IEEE international symposium on object/component/service-oriented real-time distributed computing workshops (ISCORCW 2013). IEEE Computer Society, pp 1–60

  2. Vassev E, Hinchey M (2013) Autonomy requirements engineering: a case study on the BepiColombo mission. In: Proceedings of C* conference on computer science & software engineering (C3S2E ’13), ACM, pp 31–41

  3. Vassev E, Hinchey M (2013) Autonomy requirements engineering. In: Proceedings of the 14th IEEE international conference on information reuse and integration (IRI ’13), IEEE Computer Society, pp 175–184

  4. Vassev E, Hinchey M (2013) Autonomy requirements engineering. IEEE Comput 46(8):82–84

    Article  Google Scholar 

  5. Ross DT, Schoman KE (1977) Structured analysis for requirements definition. IEEE Trans Softw Eng 3(1):6–15

  6. van Lamsweerde A, Darimont R, Massonet P. (1995) Goal-directed elaboration of requirements for a meeting scheduler: problems and lessons learnt. In: Proceedings of the 2nd international IEEE symposium on requirements engineering, IEEE, pp 194–203

  7. Haumer P, Pohl K, Weidenhaupt K (1998) Requirements elicitation and validation with real world scenes. IEEE Trans Softw Eng, Special Issue on Scenario Management 1036–1054

  8. Rolland C, Souveyet C, Achour CB (1998) Guiding goal-modeling using scenarios. IEEE Trans Softw Eng, Special Issue on Scenario Management 1055–1071

  9. van Lamsweerde A (2000) Requirements engineering in the year 00: a research perspective. In: Proceedings of the 22nd international conference on software engineering (ICSE’2000), ACM, pp 5–19

  10. Kirwan B, Ainsworth LK (1992) A guide to task analysis. CRC Press, Boca Raton

    Book  Google Scholar 

  11. Fortescue P, Swinerd G, Stark J (eds) (2011) Spacecraft systems engineering, 4th edn. Wiley, New York

    Google Scholar 

  12. Nixon BA (1993) Dealing with performance requirements during the development of information systems. In: Proceedings of the 1st international IEEE symposium on requirements engineering (RE’93), pp 42–49

  13. Lamsweerde A, van Letier E (2000) Handling obstacles in goal-oriented requirements engineering. IEEE Trans Softw Eng, Special Issue on Exception Handling 26(10):978–1005

  14. Amoroso EJ (1994) Fundamentals of computer security. Prentice-Hall, Upper Saddle River

    MATH  Google Scholar 

  15. Leveson NG (1995) Safeware: system safety and computers. ACM Press, New York

    Google Scholar 

  16. Pumfrey DJ (1999) The principled design of computer system safety analyses. DPhil thesis, University of York

  17. Vassev E, Hinchey M (2015) KnowLang: knowledge representation for self-adaptive systems. IEEE Comput 48(2):81–84

  18. Ewens WJ, Grant GR (2005) Stochastic processes (i): Poison processes and Markov chains. In: Statistical methods in bioinformatics, 2nd edn. Springer, New York, pp 155–173

  19. Benkhoff J (2012) BepiColombo: overview and latest updates. European Planetary Science Congress, EPSC Abstracts

Download references

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by ESTEC ESA (Contract No. 4000106016), by the European Union FP7 Integrated Project Autonomic Service-Component Ensembles (ASCENS), and by Science Foundation Ireland Grant 03/CE2/I303_1 to Lero—the Irish Software Engineering Research Centre at University of Limerick, Ireland.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Lero – the Irish Software Engineering Research Centre, University of Limerick, Limerick, Ireland

    Emil Vassev & Mike Hinchey

Authors
  1. Emil Vassev
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Mike Hinchey
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Emil Vassev.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Vassev, E., Hinchey, M. Capturing autonomy features for unmanned spacecraft with ARE, the autonomy requirements engineering approach. Innovations Syst Softw Eng 12, 95–107 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11334-015-0257-3

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11334-015-0257-3

Keywords

Search

Navigation