How Friartuck managed to help NASA in a great way

An introduction to Friartuck

FriarTuck is a Singapore-based software company dedicated to developing and marketing turnkey software solutions and consulting services for scheduling of complex events. It was started in August 2001 by Dr. Martin Henz, an assistant professor at the National University of Singapore's School of Computing, and Sevugan Alagappan, then an undergraduate student in NUS.

How did Friartuck manage to help NASA

NASA needed a software to schedule scientists and engineers for the Mars Exploration Rovers mission. The rovers, Spirit and Opportunity successfully landed on Mars and are currently carrying out valuable research work. At any particular time, each of the two Nasa rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, has to be monitored by at least 22 scientists as they roam the dusty surface of the Red Planet.  

Friartuck's software, FTStaffRosterer, created automated schedules for a team of 200 scientists, who filled  filling 22 different operational roles. FTStaffRosterer took into account various factors such as when the scientists prefer to work, and their expertise. It also adhered to strict rules about their rest time so as to minimise fatigue. Since the whole mission is run on Mars time, which is about 40 minutes longer than an Earth day, the staff show up for their shifts 40 minutes later each day.

It is an extremely difficult to find an optimal schedule that works within all these constraints. However FTStaffRosterer  provided an excellent means of easily managing the schedule, thus saving a lot of time for NASA.

An Achievement

It is remarkable to note that this scheduling software developed by Dr. Martin Henz and Sevugan Alagappan, was actually a university project. Also, as fellow Singaporeans, we are proud that people of our nation are involved in a small but significant way in Nasa's project. Well done!