Engineering topics

Latorella, Kara

Publications and source records attributed to Latorella, Kara.

10 records

NASA NTRS2017

NASA's Advanced Exploration Systems Mars Transit Habitat Refinement Point of Departure Design

This paper describes the recently developed point of departure design for a long duration, reusable Mars Transit Habitat, which was established during a 2016 NASA habitat design refinement activity supporting the definition of NASA's Evolvable Mars Campaign. As part of its development of sustainable human Mars mission concepts achievable in the 2030s, the Evolvable Mars Campaign has identified desired durations and mass/dimensional limits for long duration Mars habitat designs to enable the currently assumed solar electric and chemical transportation architectures. The Advanced Exploration Systems Mars Transit Habitat Refinement Activity brought together habitat subsystem design expertise from across NASA to develop an increased fidelity, consensus design for a transit habitat within these constraints. The resulting design and data (including a mass equipment list) contained in this paper are intended to help teams across the agency and potential commercial, academic, or international partners understand: 1) the current architecture/habitat guidelines and assumptions, 2) performance targets of such a habitat (particularly in mass, volume, and power), 3) the driving technology/capability developments and architectural solutions which are necessary for achieving these targets, and 4) mass reduction opportunities and research/design needs to inform the development of future research and proposals. Data presented includes: an overview of the habitat refinement activity including motivation and process when informative; full documentation of the baseline design guidelines and assumptions; detailed mass and volume breakdowns; a moderately detailed concept of operations; a preliminary interior layout design with rationale; a list of the required capabilities necessary to enable the desired mass; and identification of any worthwhile trades/analyses which could inform future habitat design efforts. As a whole, the data in the paper show that a transit habitat meeting the 43 metric tons launch mass/trans-Mars injection burn limits specified by the Evolvable Mars Campaign is achievable near the desired timeframe with moderate strategic investments including maintainable life support systems, repurposable structures and packaging, and lightweight exercise modalities. It also identifies operational and technological options to reduce this mass to less than 41 metric tons including staging of launch structure/packaging and alternate structural materials.

Simon, Matthew↗

NASA NTRS2015

Flight Deck Interval Management Avionics: Eye-Tracking Analysis

Interval Management (IM) is one NexGen method for achieving airspace efficiencies. In order to initiate IM procedures, Air Traffic Control provides an IM clearance to the IM aircraft's pilots that indicates an intended spacing from another aircraft (the target to follow - or TTF) and the point at which this should be achieved. Pilots enter the clearance in the flight deck IM (FIM) system; and once the TTF's Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast signal is available, the FIM algorithm generates target speeds to meet that IM goal. This study examined four Avionics Conditions (defined by the instrumentation and location presenting FIM information) and three Notification Methods (defined by the visual and aural alerts that notified pilots to IM-related events). Current commercial pilots flew descents into Dallas/Fort-Worth in a high-fidelity commercial flight deck simulation environment with realistic traffic and communications. All 12 crews experienced each Avionics Condition, where order was counterbalanced over crews. Each crew used only one of the three Notification Methods. This paper presents results from eye tracking data collected from both pilots, including: normalized number of samples falling within FIM displays, normalized heads-up time, noticing time, dwell time on first FIM display look after a new speed, a workload-related metric, and a measure comparing the scan paths of pilot flying and pilot monitoring; and discusses these in the context of other objective (vertical and speed profile deviations, response time to dial in commanded speeds, out-of-speed-conformance and reminder indications) and subjective measures (workload, situation awareness, usability, and operational acceptability).

Latorella, Kara↗

NASA NTRS2014

Design of Two RadWorks Storm Shelters for Solar Particle Event Shielding

In order to enable long-duration human exploration beyond low-Earth orbit, the risks associated with exposure of astronaut crews to space radiation must be mitigated with practical and affordable solutions. The space radiation environment beyond the magnetosphere is primarily a combination of two types of radiation: galactic cosmic rays (GCR) and solar particle events (SPE). While mitigating GCR exposure remains an open issue, reducing astronaut exposure to SPEs is achievable through material shielding because they are made up primarily of medium-energy protons. In order to ensure astronaut safety for long durations beyond low-Earth orbit, SPE radiation exposure must be mitigated. However, the increasingly demanding spacecraft propulsive performance for these ambitious missions requires minimal mass and volume radiation shielding solutions which leverage available multi-functional habitat structures and logistics as much as possible. This paper describes the efforts of NASA's RadWorks Advanced Exploration Systems (AES) Project to design two minimal mass SPE radiation shelter concepts leveraging available resources: one based upon reconfiguring habitat interiors to create a centralized protection area and one based upon augmenting individual crew quarters with waterwalls and logistics. Discussion items include the design features of the concepts, a radiation analysis of their implementations, an assessment of the parasitic mass of each concept, and the result of a human in the loop evaluation performed to drive out design and operational issues.

Simon, Matthew↗

NASA NTRS2013

A Signal Detection Theory Approach to Evaluating Oculometer Data Quality

Currently, data quality is described in terms of spatial and temporal accuracy and precision [Holmqvist et al. in press]. While this approach provides precise errors in pixels, or visual angle, often experiments are more concerned with whether subjects'points of gaze can be said to be reliable with respect to experimentally-relevant areas of interest. This paper proposes a method to characterize oculometer data quality using Signal Detection Theory (SDT) [Marcum 1947]. SDT classification results in four cases: Hit (correct report of a signal), Miss (failure to report a ), False Alarm (a signal falsely reported), Correct Reject (absence of a signal correctly reported). A technique is proposed where subjects' are directed to look at points in and outside of an AOI, and the resulting Points of Gaze (POG) are classified as Hits (points known to be internal to an AOI are classified as such), Misses (AOI points are not indicated as such), False Alarms (points external to AOIs are indicated as in the AOI), or Correct Rejects (points external to the AOI are indicated as such). SDT metrics describe performance in terms of discriminability, sensitivity, and specificity. This paper presentation will provide the procedure for conducting this assessment and an example of data collected for AOIs in a simulated flightdeck environment.

Latorella, Kara↗

NASA NTRS2010

Dual Oculometer System for Aviation Crew Assessment

Oculometers, eye trackers, are a useful tool for ascertaining the manner in which pilots deploy visual attentional resources, and for assessing the degree to which stimuli capture attention exogenously. The aim of this effort was to obtain oculometer data comfortably, unobtrusively, reliably and with good spatial resolution over a standard B757-like flight deck for both individuals in a crew. We chose to implement two remote, 5-camera Smarteye systems which were crafted for this purpose to operate harmoniously. We present here the results of validation exercises, lessons learned for improving data quality, and initial thoughts on the use of paired oculometer data to reflect crew workload, coordination, and situation awareness, in the aggregate.

Latorella, Kara↗

NASA NTRS2004

Cockpit System Situational Awareness Modeling Tool

This project explored the possibility of predicting pilot situational awareness (SA) using human performance modeling techniques for the purpose of evaluating developing cockpit systems. The Improved Performance Research Integration Tool (IMPRINT) was combined with the Adaptive Control of Thought-Rational (ACT-R) cognitive modeling architecture to produce a tool that can model both the discrete tasks of pilots and the cognitive processes associated with SA. The techniques for using this tool to predict SA were demonstrated using the newly developed Aviation Weather Information (AWIN) system. By providing an SA prediction tool to cockpit system designers, cockpit concepts can be assessed early in the design process while providing a cost-effective complement to the traditional pilot-in-the-loop experiments and data collection techniques.

Keller, John↗

NASA NTRS2003

Evaluation of a Dispatcher's Route Optimization Decision Aid to Avoid Aviation Weather Hazards

This document describes the results and analysis of the formal evaluation plan for the Honeywell software tool developed under the NASA AWIN (Aviation Weather Information) 'Weather Avoidance using Route Optimization as a Decision Aid' project. The software tool aims to provide airline dispatchers with a decision aid for selecting optimal routes that avoid weather and other hazards. This evaluation compares and contrasts route selection performance with the AWIN tool to that of subjects using a more traditional dispatcher environment. The evaluation assesses gains in safety, in fuel efficiency of planned routes, and in time efficiency in the pre-flight dispatch process through the use of the AWIN decision aid. In addition, we are interested in how this AWIN tool affects constructs that can be related to performance. The construct of Situation Awareness (SA), workload, trust in an information system, and operator acceptance are assessed using established scales, where these exist, as well as through the evaluation of questionnaire responses and subject comments. The intention of the experiment is to set up a simulated operations area for the dispatchers to work in. They will be given scenarios in which they are presented with stored company routes for a particular city-pair and aircraft type. A diverse set of external weather information sources is represented by a stand-alone display (MOCK), containing the actual historical weather data typically used by dispatchers. There is also the possibility of presenting selected weather data on the route visualization tool. The company routes have not been modified to avoid the weather except in the case of one additional route generated by the Honeywell prototype flight planning system. The dispatcher will be required to choose the most appropriate and efficient flight plan route in the displayed weather conditions. The route may be modified manually or may be chosen from those automatically displayed.

Dorneich, Michael C.↗

NASA NTRS2003

Decision-Making in Flight with Different Convective Weather Information Sources: Preliminary Results from the Langley CoWS Experiment (COnvective Weather Sources)

This viewgraph presentation provides information on an airborne experiment designed to test the decision making of pilots receiving different sources of meteorological data. The presentation covers the equipment used in the COnvective Weather Sources (CoWS) Experiment), including the information system and display devices available to some of the subjects. It also describes the experiment, which featured teams of general aviation pilots, who were onboard but did not actually fly the aircraft used in the experiment. The presentation includes the results of a survey of the subjects' confidence.

Chamberlain, Jim↗

NASA NTRS2002

General Aviation Pilots' Perceived Usage and Valuation of Aviation Weather Information Sources

Aviation suffers many accidents due to the lack of good weather information in flight. Existing aviation weather information is difficult to obtain when it is most needed and is not well formatted for in-flight use. Because it is generally presented aurally, aviation weather information is difficult to integrate with spatial flight information and retain for reference. Efforts, by NASA's Aviation Weather Information (AWIN) team and others, to improve weather information accessibility, usability and decision aiding will enhance General Aviation (GA) pilots' weather situation awareness and decision-making and therefore should improve the safety of GA flight. Consideration of pilots' economic concerns will ensure that in-flight weather information systems are financially accessible to GA pilots as well. The purpose of this survey was to describe how aviation operator communities gather and use weather information as well as how weather related decisions are made between flight crews and supporting personnel. Pilots of small GA aircraft experience the most weather-related accidents as well as the most fatal weather related accident. For this reason, the survey design and advertisement focused on encouraging participation from GA pilots. Perhaps as a result of this emphasis, most responses, 97 responses or 85% of the entire response set, were from GA pilots, This paper presents only analysis of these GA pilots' responses. The insights provided by this survey regarding GA pilots' perceived value and usage of current aviation weather information. services, and products provide a basis for technological approaches to improve GA safety. Results of this survey are discussed in the context of survey limitations and prior work, and serve as the foundation for a model of weather information value, guidance for the design of in-flight weather information systems, and definition of further research toward their development.

Latorella, Kara↗

NASA NTRS2001

Cognitive Task Analysis of Business Jet Pilots' Weather Flying Behaviors: Preliminary Results

This report presents preliminary findings from a cognitive task analysis (CTA) of business aviation piloting. Results describe challenging weather-related aviation decisions and the information and cues used to support these decisions. Further, these results demonstrate the role of expertise in business aviation decision-making in weather flying, and how weather information is acquired and assessed for reliability. The challenging weather scenarios and novice errors identified in the results provide the basis for experimental scenarios and dependent measures to be used in future flight simulation evaluations of candidate aviation weather information systems. Finally, we analyzed these preliminary results to recommend design and training interventions to improve business aviation decision-making with weather information. The primary objective of this report is to present these preliminary findings and to document the extended CTA methodology used to elicit and represent expert business aviator decision-making with weather information. These preliminary findings will be augmented with results from additional subjects using this methodology. A summary of the complete results, absent the detailed treatment of methodology provided in this report, will be documented in a separate publication.

Latorella, Kara↗