Autonomy requirements engineering: a case study on the Bepicolombo mission

The development of unmanned space exploration missions is closely related to integration and promotion of autonomy in robotic spacecraft. Elicitation and expression of autonomy requirements is one of the most significant challenges the autonomous spacecraft engineers need to overcome. Nowadays, requirements engineering for autonomous systems appears to be a wide open research area with no definitive solution yet. This paper presents an approach to Autonomy Requirements Engineering where Goal-Oriented Requirements Engineering is merged with special Generic Autonomy Requirements. To provide a solution to the domain of space missions, the Generic Autonomy Requirements are put in the context of space missions. Further, the approach is applied to a case study based on the ESA’s BepiColombo Mission where mission’s autonomy requirements are elicited.