A collaborative work environment and a new console for the European Space Agency (ESA)

Symbio won this international contract in association with EADS Astrium (Germany), OFFIS (Germany) and TERMA (Denmark). The objective was to develop a hardware and software collaborative work environment for the operators at ESA's control centers and ground stations. Symbio in particular was in charge of designing and manufacturing a console to integrate the software developed by the other partners. The project was executed at the ESOC center in Darmstadt.

Multiple collaborative modalities were envisioned in the concept, such us through traditional workstation-based software, touch tables and virtual reality.

Symbio also played an important role in the setting up of the project, by contributing significantly to the original idea, and then in the course of the project during the task analysis and the development of software concepts and interfaces to support collaborative work. The other partners brought in particular their know-how in software engineering and the space domain.

The challenges

The main challenges were to :

• contribute significantly  to the practice and tools in use at ESA
• assimilate the concepts and technical aspects related to the space domain
• work in a collaborative and integrated way with other consortium members and end-users provided by ESA

For the consortium members in charge of the software implementation, an important challenge was to interface with the ESA software infrastructure, in particular in term of data coding formats and communication protocols.

The results

Software and environment concept for collaboration

The consortium responded to the public call for tenders issued by ESA, and won, by proposing a concept of work environment for sharing multimedia content between co-located workstations, in the same room or in the same building, or not, typically in a remote control center.

In the spatial domain, at the time of the project, this type of solution was not yet really developed. Operators and controllers are often distributed among multiple control rooms, sometimes located several thousand kilometers away, and they solely exchange verbal content via voice loops. In the case of a rocket launch for example, there are voice loops for telemetry, trajectory tracking, monitoring of onboard software, etc. The voice loops are therefore parallel collaborative spaces in which various contributors can intervene and share information, but only through voice.

The consortium's proposal was to extend these collaborative spaces beyond simple voice sharing and allow real-time sharing of - and interaction with - documents, software applications, video streams, etc. Each user can participate in several such collaborative channels, in parallel, via a dynamic subscription system, as is the case with voice loops, but with far more complex data and media types and interaction capabilities.

Design of work consoles for co-located and non-co-located collaborative work

Symbio designed the work consoles for integrating the collaborative software. That software wasto be interacted with through a touchscreen device. Two versions of the console were proposed: a rather conservative version (left figure below) and more innovative one, sporting a very wide touch screen (right figure below).

Several consoles can be put next to each other, as a in a typical control room, in a curvilinear or straight pattern.

Smaller versions of the collaborative workstations can also be used

Beyond the console concepts, Symbio also designed all aspects needed to make the console usable and agreeable and in line with applicable ergonomic standards. Lighting for example.

Or a foot rest or pegs or holders for small equipment such as a headset or beverage cups.

Once the console detailed design had been completed, Symbio proceeded with constructive analysis, which aims at producing the digital files needed by our suppliers to produce a physical version of the console.

Manufacture of a console prototype

A full scale prototype was then manufactured by Symbio and shipped to ESA's premises in Darmstadt, for hardware and software integration, technical tests, and finally tests with end users.

Technical tests and user evaluation of the collaborative software

The collaborative, multimedia sharing software developed by the consortium was thus installed on the touch screen on the console and on a tablet for remote and nomad monitoring and control of operation.

The software was also installed on a fully interactive touch table, as proposed in the initial collaborative concept.

About the European Space Agency (ESA)

The European Space Agency (ESA) is an European intergovernmental organisation dedicated to the exploration of space.  ESA's headquarters are in Paris and it has centers in Germany (EAC, ESOC), Spain (ESAC), Italy (ESRIN), the Netherlands (ESTEC), UK (ECSAT) and Belgium (ESEC). ESA also has liaison offices in Belgium, USA and Russia; a launch base in French Guiana and ground/tracking stations in various parts of the world. The AERG project was executed at ESOC in Darmstadt.