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At least 667 records · Page 37
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRS2017

Autonomy Operating System for UAVs: Pilot-in-a-Box

The Autonomy Operating System (AOS) is an open flight software platform with Artificial Intelligence for smart UAVs. It is built to be extendable with new apps, similar to smartphones, to enable an expanding set of missions and capabilities. AOS has as its foundations NASAs core flight executive and core flight software (cFEcFS). Pilot-in-a-Box (PIB) is an expanding collection of interacting AOS apps that provide the knowledge and intelligence onboard a UAV to safely and autonomously fly in the National Air Space, eventually without a remote human ground crew. Longer-term, the goal of PIB is to provide the capability for pilotless air vehicles such as air taxis that will be key for new transportation concepts such as mobility-on-demand. PIB provides the procedural knowledge, situational awareness, and anticipatory planning (thinking ahead of the plane) that comprises pilot competencies. These competencies together with a natural language interface will enable Pilot-in-a-Box to dialogue directly with Air Traffic Management from takeoff through landing. This paper describes the overall AOS architecture, Artificial Intelligence reasoning engines, Pilot-in-a-box competencies, and selected experimental flight tests to date.

Lowry, Michael↗
NASA NTRS1988

Expert systems for MSFC power systems

Future space vehicles and platforms including Space Station will possess complex power systems. These systems will require a high level of autonomous operation to allow the crew to concentrate on mission activities and to limit the number of ground support personnel to a reasonable number. The Electrical Power Branch at NASA-Marshall is developing advanced automation approaches which will enable the necessary levels of autonomy. These approaches include the utilization of knowledge based or expert systems.

Weeks, David J.↗
NASA NTRS1990

System control of an autonomous planetary mobile spacecraft

The goal is to suggest the scheduling and control functions necessary for accomplishing mission objectives of a fairly autonomous interplanetary mobile spacecraft, while maximizing reliability. Goals are to provide an extensible, reliable system conservative in its use of on-board resources, while getting full value from subsystem autonomy, and avoiding the lure of ground micromanagement. A functional layout consisting of four basic elements is proposed: GROUND and SYSTEM EXECUTIVE system functions and RESOURCE CONTROL and ACTIVITY MANAGER subsystem functions. The system executive includes six subfunctions: SYSTEM MANAGER, SYSTEM FAULT PROTECTION, PLANNER, SCHEDULE ADAPTER, EVENT MONITOR and RESOURCE MONITOR. The full configuration is needed for autonomous operation on Moon or Mars, whereas a reduced version without the planning, schedule adaption and event monitoring functions could be appropriate for lower-autonomy use on the Moon. An implementation concept is suggested which is conservative in use of system resources and consists of modules combined with a network communications fabric. A language concept termed a scheduling calculus for rapidly performing essential on-board schedule adaption functions is introduced.

Dias, William C.↗
NASA NTRS2011

Haptic-Multimodal Flight Control System Update

The rapidly advancing capabilities of autonomous aircraft suggest a future where many of the responsibilities of today s pilot transition to the vehicle, transforming the pilot s job into something akin to driving a car or simply being a passenger. Notionally, this transition will reduce the specialized skills, training, and attention required of the human user while improving safety and performance. However, our experience with highly automated aircraft highlights many challenges to this transition including: lack of automation resilience; adverse human-automation interaction under stress; and the difficulty of developing certification standards and methods of compliance for complex systems performing critical functions traditionally performed by the pilot (e.g., sense and avoid vs. see and avoid). Recognizing these opportunities and realities, researchers at NASA Langley are developing a haptic-multimodal flight control (HFC) system concept that can serve as a bridge between today s state of the art aircraft that are highly automated but have little autonomy and can only be operated safely by highly trained experts (i.e., pilots) to a future in which non-experts (e.g., drivers) can safely and reliably use autonomous aircraft to perform a variety of missions. This paper reviews the motivation and theoretical basis of the HFC system, describes its current state of development, and presents results from two pilot-in-the-loop simulation studies. These preliminary studies suggest the HFC reshapes human-automation interaction in a way well-suited to revolutionary ease-of-use.

Goodrich, Kenneth H.↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

NASA Science Technology Development Programs for Ocean Worlds Exploration

The exploration of ocean worlds such as Europa and Enceladus supports NASA’s goal to search for life and potentially habitable regions elsewhere in the universe, and further promises to help us understand the origins, evolution, and limits of life on Earth. Over the past several years, NASA’s Planetary Science Division has funded several technology development programs to enable future surface and subsurface missions to ocean worlds. These programs include Instrument Concepts for Europa Exploration (ICEE), Concepts for Ocean Worlds Life Detection Technology (COLDTech), Scientific Exploration Subsurface Access Mechanism for Europa (SESAME), Applied Information Systems Research: Autonomous Robotics Research for Ocean Worlds (AISR:ARROW), and Astrodynamics in Support of Icy Worlds Missions. Tasks selected under these programs include the development of scientific instruments including seismometers, imagers, spectrometers, and organic analyzers, and platform technologies including drills, melt probes, through-ice communications, radiation-hard electronics, and autonomy for surface operations. This paper describes the objectives of each of these programs and provides a summary of the work that has been completed or is underway in each.

technology↗
NASA NTRS2022

NASA Science Technology Development Programs for Ocean Worlds Exploration

The exploration of ocean worlds such as Europa and Enceladus supports NASA’s goal to search for life and potentially habitable regions elsewhere in the universe, and further promises to help us understand the origins, evolution, and limits of life on Earth. Over the past several years, NASA’s Planetary Science Division has funded several technology development programs to enable future surface and subsurface missions to ocean worlds. These programs include Instrument Concepts for Europa Exploration (ICEE), Concepts for Ocean Worlds Life Detection Technology (COLDTech), Scientific Exploration Subsurface Access Mechanism for Europa (SESAME), Applied Information Systems Research: Autonomous Robotics Research for Ocean Worlds (AISR:ARROW), and Astrodynamics in Support of Icy Worlds Missions. Tasks selected under these programs include the development of scientific instruments including seismometers, imagers, spectrometers, and organic analyzers, and platform technologies including drills, melt probes, through-ice communications, radiation-hard electronics, and autonomy for surface operations. This paper describes the objectives of each of these programs and provides a summary of the work that has been completed or is underway in each.

Nayar, Hari D↗
NASA NTRS2008

NASA In-Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU) Technology and Development Project Overview

Since the Vision for Space Exploration (VSE) was released in 2004, NASA, in conjunction with international space agencies, industry, and academia, has continued to define and refine plans for sustained and affordable robotic and human exploration of the Moon and beyond. With the goal of establishing a lunar Outpost on the Moon to extend human presence, pursue scientific activities, use the Moon to prepare for future human missions to Mars, and expand Earth s economic sphere, a change in how space exploration is performed is required. One area that opens up the possibility for the first time of breaking our reliance on Earth supplied consumables and learn to live off the land is In-Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU). ISRU, which involves the extraction and processing of space resources into useful products, can have a substantial impact on mission and architecture concepts. In particular, the ability to make propellants, life support consumables, and fuel cell reagents can significantly reduce the cost, mass, and risk of sustained human activities beyond Earth. However, ISRU is an unproven capability for human lunar exploration and can not be put in the critical path of lunar Outpost success until it has been proven. Therefore, ISRU development and deployment needs to take incremental steps toward the desired end state. To ensure ISRU capabilities are available for pre-Outpost and Outpost deployment by 2020, and mission and architecture planners are confident that ISRU can meet initial and long term mission requirements, the ISRU Project is developing technologies and systems in three critical areas: (1) Regolith Excavation, Handling and Material Transportation; (2) Oxygen Extraction from Regolith; and (3) Volatile Extraction and Resource Prospecting, and in four development stages: (I) Demonstrate feasibility; (II) Evolve system w/ improved technologies; (III) Develop one or more systems to TRL 6 before start of flight development; and (IV) Flight development for Outpost. To minimize cost and ensure that ISRU technologies, systems, and functions are integrated properly into the Outpost, technology development efforts are being coordinated with other development areas such as Surface Mobility, Surface Power, Life Support, EVA, and Propulsion. Lastly, laboratory and field system-level tests and demonstrations will be performed as often as possible to demonstrate improvements in: Capabilities (ex. digging deeper); Performance (ex. lower power); and Duration (ex. more autonomy or more robustness). This presentation will provide the status of work performed to date within the NASA ISRU project with respect to technology and system development and field demonstration activities, as well as the current strategy to implement ISRU in future robotic and human lunar exploration missions.

Sanders, Gerald B.↗
NASA NTRS2016

Usable Translational Hand Controllers for NASA's Habitability Design Center

This summer I was given the opportunity to work at the Habitability Design Center (HDC). NASA Johnson Space Center's HDC is currently developing Cislunar and Mars spacecraft mockups. I contributed to this effort by designing from scratch low cost, functional translational hand controllers (THCs) that will be used in spacecraft mission simulation in low to medium fidelity exploration spacecraft mockups. This project fell under the category of mechatronics, a combination of mechanical, electrical, and computer engineering. Being an aerospace engineering student, I was out of my comfort zone. And that was a wonderful thing. The autonomy that my mentor, Dr. Robert Howard, allowed me gave me the opportunity to learn by trying, failing, and trying again. This project was not only a professional success for me, but a significant learning experience. I appreciated the freedom that I had to take the time to learn new things for myself rather than blindly follow instructions. I was the sole person working on this project, and was required to work independently to solve the many hardware and software challenges that the project entailed. I researched THCs that have been used on the ISS, the Space Shuttle, and the Orion MPVC and based my design off of these. I worked through many redesigns before finding an optimal configuration of the necessary mechanisms and electrical components for the THC. Once I had a functional hardware design, I dove into the challenge of getting an Arduino Uno, an extremely low cost and easily programmable microcontroller, to behave as a human interface device. The THCs I built needed to be able to integrate to a mission simulation designed by NASA's Graphics and Visualization Lab. This proved to be the most challenging aspect of the project. To accomplish this I learned how to change the firmware of the USB serial converter microcontroller. The process was very complicated as it involved multiple software programs and manual flashing of pins on the Arduino itself. When I successfully achieved the goal I wrote an instructions manual for the process so that the HDC will be able to do this easily in the future for any human interface device they may want to create. I also created a detailed CAD model of my THC design with construction instructions. My THC utilizes three ultrasonic sensors, one for each axis of motion. I wrote a code that stimulates these sensors continuously and feeds back values from each axis ranging from -%100 to %100 of the min/max position in relation to the neutral position of each axis. This was the data that the Graphics and Visualization Lab required to interface with their simulation. I truly enjoyed working in the HDC surrounded by passionate, proactive, and brilliantly creative people. I felt valued and respected as a part of their team. I was given the time and support of my mentor whenever I asked for it. Beyond my positive project experience, I was fortunate enough to be able to take advantage of many of the extra activities that JSC has to offer. I took Russian Phase One during my lunch break every day and can now read Russian and accomplish basic verbal communication. I was heavily involved with the co-tern music video, which led to numerous incredible experiences and friendships. I saw every facility, attended every lecture, and met everyone that I could. I had coffee with Lauri Hansen. I played on an intern volleyball team at the Gilruth. I traveled to Michoud, Stennis, NOLA, and Big Bend National Park. I had the time of my life and I fell in love with JSC. In the next month I will return to Maryland and start my senior year of my undergraduate degree. As I work through it I will remember that all of the studying I do, all of the concentration I give, and all of the sacrifices that I make for school are so that I can work at a place like JSC where I am proud and excited to go into work every day. This internship was an invaluable experience for me, both professionally and personally.

Westbrook, Kimberly↗
NASA NTRS2022

Reliability-Aware Requirements Development for Autonomy Software

Autonomy is the ability of a system to make decisions and take actions in the presence of uncertainty. Validating autonomy, therefore, is a matter of validating that the system makes intelligent decisions even when there might be discrepancies between the observed and the expected state of the world as well as when the possible outcome of each of the possible courses of action is uncertain. During the requirements engineering phase, the functions, including those that are required to be autonomous and their expected behavior are specified. However, in the case of autonomous software system, it is challenging to specify all possible scenarios that the software may encounter. Additionally, since autonomous behaviors cannot always be fully predetermined, it is difficult to reason about their completeness and correctness. While these challenges are also faced with non-autonomous system, they are more prevalent for autonomous system due to their complexity and emergent behavior. Our efforts have been three-fold. On one hand, we have developed a goal-based method for requirements decomposition. We have embedded this approach into a higher-level systems engineering framework and then developed methods for decision and reliability analysis within this framework. And finally, we use simulation analysis to validate the more theoretical methods and provide a feedback mechanism. The decision analysis approach (DA) helps in identifying and mitigating the run-time risks, by bringing to the forefront the uncertainties, decisions, interactions, and other factors that may cause autonomous software to make erroneous decisions. The DA framework is used to quantify, for each decision that the software can make, failure risk due to uncertainties. The information about the key decisions and circumstances that can cause autonomous system to make incorrect decisions are used to generate test scenarios to be run in a simulator to ensure that the system can handle error-prone circumstances. The results or outcomes from decisions, based on the simulated scenarios, can then be leveraged to further gain insight of the assured system. We combine a goal-based approach with simulation analysis to facilitate requirements development for autonomous systems and further provide a method for run-time systems level reliability considerations during the autonomous software development process. The DA and the reliability analysis methods provide a formalism for the consideration of uncertainty in the run time decision-making process for autonomous software. This formalism considers the uncertainty involved in the outcome of different courses of action, in terms of performance and cost, as well as a method to consider the system level reliability implications. System level reliability considerations for autonomous software decision making contribute to the satisfaction of the system level goals over the lifecycle of a given mission. We demonstrate our approach using a hypothetical rover path planning example. The requirements for our rover simulator are based on existing literature about Mars rovers and lessons learned from real world observations at JPL. The specifics of the autonomy design for the Mars rovers, that have not been previously cleared for external release, are not used for our demonstrations.

Lindvall, Mikael↗
NASA NTRS2018

Development and Testing of a Vehicle Management System for Autonomous Spacecraft Habitat Operations

As the increased distance between Earth-based mission control and the spacecraft results in increasing communication delays, small crews cannot take on all functions performed by ground today, and so vehicles must be more automated to reduce the crew workload for such missions. In addition, both near-term and future missions will feature significant periods when crew is not present, meaning the vehicles will need to operate themselves autonomously. NASA's Advanced Exploration Systems Program pioneers new approaches for rapidly developing prototype systems, demonstrating key capabilities, and validating operational concepts for future human missions beyond low-Earth orbit. Under this program, NASA has developed and demonstrated multiple technologies to enable the autonomous operation of a dormant space habitat. These technologies included a fault-tolerant avionics architecture, novel spacecraft power system and power system controller, and autonomy software to control the habitat. The demonstration involved simulation of the habitat and multiple spacecraft sub-systems (power storage and distribution, avionics, and air-side life-support) during a multi-day test at NASA's Johnson Space Center. The foundation of the demonstration was ‘quiescent operations' of a habitat during a 55 minute eclipse period. For this demonstration, the spacecraft power distribution system and air-side life support system were simulated at a high level of fidelity; additional systems were managed, but with lower fidelity operational constraints and system behavior. Operational constraints for real and simulated loads were developed by analyzing on-orbit hardware and evaluating future Exploration capable technology. A total of 13 real and simulated loads were used during the test. Eight scenarios including both nominal and off-nominal conditions were performed. Over the course of the test, every application performed its desired functions successfully during the simulated tests. The results will inform both future tests, as well as provide insight to NASA's domestic and international partners, as they construct the next generation of space habitats to be used on beyond-Earth missions.

Autonomous Systems and Operations↗
NASA NTRS1994

Terrain modelling and motion planning for an autonomous exploration rover

To assess the feasibility of planetary exploration missions using rovers, the French national agency CNES, with a consortium of European laboratories and industrial concerns, has initiated the Eureka project, 'Illustration of an Autonomous Robot for the Exploration of Space' (IARES). IARES is a demonstrator composed of a rover and a ground station, linked by telemetry and telecommand. It is aimed at verifying, on earth, robotic concepts developed by the RISP group of French laboratories (LAAS, INRIA, CERT, LETI) to perform scientific missions such as autonomous terrain sample collecting over large areas. To cope with the actual needs of planet exploration, IARES suitability is assessed through constraints on limited bandwidth, time delay and on-board resources. This autonomy relies heavily on robust onboard trajectory generation capabilities. This paper presents the main functions of the IARES navigation sub-system and shows how they are combined to allow movement in Mars-like environments. Section 2 gives an overall description of the IARES system. Section 3 details the functions of the Navigation sub-system, and finally, section 4 illustrates with a simple example the use of these functions.

Richard, F.↗
NASA NTRS2012

A Briefing on Metrics and Risks for Autonomous Decision-Making in Aerospace Applications

Significant technology advances will enable future aerospace systems to safely and reliably make decisions autonomously, or without human interaction. The decision-making may result in actions that enable an aircraft or spacecraft in an off-nominal state or with slightly degraded components to achieve mission performance and safety goals while reducing or avoiding damage to the aircraft or spacecraft. Some key technology enablers for autonomous decision-making include: a continuous state awareness through the maturation of the prognostics health management field, novel sensor development, and the considerable gains made in computation power and data processing bandwidth versus system size. Sophisticated algorithms and physics based models coupled with these technological advances allow reliable assessment of a system, subsystem, or components. Decisions that balance mission objectives and constraints with remaining useful life predictions can be made autonomously to maintain safety requirements, optimal performance, and ensure mission objectives. This autonomous approach to decision-making will come with new risks and benefits, some of which will be examined in this paper. To start, an account of previous work to categorize or quantify autonomy in aerospace systems will be presented. In addition, a survey of perceived risks in autonomous decision-making in the context of piloted aircraft and remotely piloted or completely autonomous unmanned autonomous systems (UAS) will be presented based on interviews that were conducted with individuals from industry, academia, and government.

Frost, Susan↗
NASA NTRS2017

Design Reference Missions (DRM): Integrated ODM 'Air-Taxi' Mission Features

Design Reference Missions (DRM): Integrated ODM Air-Taxi Mission Features, Hybrid Electric Integrated System Testbed (HEIST) flight control. Structural Health, Energy Storage, Electric Components, Loss of Control, Degraded Systems, System Health, Real-Time IO Operator Geo-Fencing, Regional Noise Abatement and Trusted Autonomy Inter-operability.

Kloesel, Kurt↗
NASA NTRS2018

Playbook for UAS: UX of Goal-Oriented Planning & Execution

We are evaluating the tool Playbook, a mission planning and scheduling tool used for analog missions and research experiments at NASA. We are adapting Playbook to support an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) demonstration that will simulate a "search and recover" mission. To support this demonstration, we need to test this software and its usability with human subjects. Playbook will be used to plan, edit, and monitor simulated UAV swarms, and we are interested in evaluating these capabilities. Allocation of roles and responsibilities between human-automation systems is key to promoting productive cooperation between these two agents. When guiding swarms the user should not be concerned with moving waypoints, adjusting heading and altitude or any other small actions that traditional pilots control. Providing situational awareness through sensor data including radar, heat, live camera feed, and topographic information are key when managing multiple UAVs together. First responders need a good picture of disaster areas in order to make informed decisions. These sensors can initiate movements in the mission that indicate when the human should take control of single aircraft.

UAV swarms↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

NASA Science Technology Development Programs for Ocean Worlds Exploration

The exploration of icy satellites such as Europa and Enceladus supports NASA’s goal to search for life and potentially habitable regions elsewhere in the universe, and further promises to help us understand the origins, evolution, and limits of life on Earth. Over the past several years, NASA’s Planetary Science Division has funded several technology development programs to enable future surface and subsurface missions to ocean worlds. These programs include Instrument Concepts for Europa Exploration (ICEE), Concepts for Ocean Worlds Life Detection Technology (COLDTech), Scientific Exploration Subsurface Access Mechanism for Europa (SESAME), Applied Information Systems Research: Autonomous Robotics Research for Ocean Worlds (AISR:ARROW), and Astrodynamics in Support of Icy Worlds Missions. Tasks selected under these programs include the development of scientific instruments including seismometers, imagers, spectrometers, and organic analyzers, and also platform technologies including drills, melt probes, through-ice communications, radiation-hard electronics, and autonomy for surface operations. This paper describes the objectives of each of these programs and provides a summary of the work that has been completed or is underway in each.

science instruments↗
NASA NTRS1993

Making tomorrow's mistakes today: Evolutionary prototyping for risk reduction and shorter development time

In the early days of JPL's solar system exploration, each spacecraft mission required its own dedicated data system with all software applications written in the mainframe's native assembly language. Although these early telemetry processing systems were a triumph of engineering in their day, since that time the computer industry has advanced to the point where it is now advantageous to replace these systems with more modern technology. The Space Flight Operations Center (SFOC) Prototype group was established in 1985 as a workstation and software laboratory. The charter of the lab was to determine if it was possible to construct a multimission telemetry processing system using commercial, off-the-shelf computers that communicated via networks. The staff of the lab mirrored that of a typical skunk works operation -- a small, multi-disciplinary team with a great deal of autonomy that could get complex tasks done quickly. In an effort to determine which approaches would be useful, the prototype group experimented with all types of operating systems, inter-process communication mechanisms, network protocols, packet size parameters. Out of that pioneering work came the confidence that a multi-mission telemetry processing system could be built using high-level languages running in a heterogeneous, networked workstation environment. Experience revealed that the operating systems on all nodes should be similar (i.e., all VMS or all PC-DOS or all UNIX), and that a unique Data Transport Subsystem tool needed to be built to address the incompatibilities of network standards, byte ordering, and socket buffering. The advantages of building a telemetry processing system based on emerging industry standards were numerous: by employing these standards, we would no longer be locked into a single vendor. When new technology came to market which offered ten times the performance at one eighth the cost, it would be possible to attach the new machine to the network, re-compile the application code, and run. In addition, we would no longer be plagued with lack of manufacturer support when we encountered obscure bugs. And maybe, hopefully, the eternal elusive goal of software portability across different vendors' platforms would finally be available. Some highlights of our prototyping efforts are described.

Friedman, Gary↗
NASA NTRS2019

Everybody Needs Somebody Sometimes: Validation of Adaptive Recovery in Robotic Space Operations

This work assesses an adaptive approach to fault recovery in autonomous robotic space operations, which uses indicators of opportunity, such as physiological state measurements and observations of past human assistant performance, to inform future selections. We validated our reinforcement learning approach using data we collected from humans executing simulated mission scenarios. We present a method of structuring human-factors experiments that permits collection of relevant indicator of opportunity and assigned assistance task performance data, as well as evaluation of our adaptive approach, without requiring large numbers of test subjects. Application of our reinforcement learning algorithm to our experimental data shows that our adaptive assistant selection approach can achieve lower cumulative regret compared to existing non-adaptive baseline approaches when using real human data. Our work has applications beyond space robotics to any application where autonomy failures may occur that require external intervention.

Human-centered robotics↗
NASA NTRS2009

Human Factors in Training

Future space missions will be significantly longer than current shuttle missions and new systems will be more complex than current systems. Increasing communication delays between crews and Earth-based support means that astronauts need to be prepared to handle the unexpected on their own. As crews become more autonomous, their potential span of control and required expertise must grow to match their autonomy. It is not possible to train for every eventuality ahead of time on the ground, or to maintain trained skills across long intervals of disuse. To adequately prepare NASA personnel for these challenges, new training approaches, methodologies, and tools are required. This research project aims at developing these training capabilities. By researching established training principles, examining future needs, and by using current practices in space flight training as test beds, both in Flight Controller and Crew Medical domains, this research project is mitigating program risks and generating templates and requirements to meet future training needs. Training efforts in Fiscal Year 08 (FY08) strongly focused on crew medical training, but also began exploring how Space Flight Resource Management training for Mission Operations Directorate (MOD) Flight Controllers could be integrated with systems training for optimal Mission Control Center (MCC) operations. The Training Task addresses Program risks that lie at the intersection of the following three risks identified by the Project: (1) Risk associated with poor task design (2) Risk of error due to inadequate information (3) Risk associated with reduced safety and efficiency due to poor human factors design

Barshi, Immanuel↗