Ontology to improve autonomous interactions between space vehicles

Future planetary robotic missions will involve several robotic agents of various origins, with various levels of autonomy which will have to interact on site, to perform tasks of increasing complexity. The different needs and problematic of such missions are presented as well as the first steps to develop an ontology covering the domain of space robotic exploration and its potential use to support direct interactions between robotic agents. This work, at the crossing of multi-agent systems, knowledge management and embedded control architectures, is aimed mainly at providing a generic service oriented interface and interactions mechanisms for robotic agents to support a high level of autonomous cooperation. I