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NASA NTRS2004

Development of the On-board Aircraft Network

Phase II will focus on the development of the on-board aircraft networking portion of the testbed which includes the subnet and router configuration and investigation of QoS issues. This implementation of the testbed will consist of a workstation, which functions as the end system, connected to a router. The router will service two subnets that provide data to the cockpit and the passenger cabin. During the testing, data will be transferred between the end systems and those on both subnets. QoS issues will be identified and a preliminary scheme will be developed. The router will be configured for the testbed network and initial security studies will be initiated. In addition, architecture studies of both the SITA and Immarsat networks will be conducted.

Green, Bryan D. W.↗

NASA NTRS2004

Constructing an Educational Mars Simulation

January 14th 2004, President George Bush announces his plans to catalyst the space program into a new era of space exploration and discovery. His vision encompasses a robotics program to explore our solar system, a return to the moon, the human exploration of Mars, and to promote international prosperity towards our endeavors. We at NASA now have the task of constructing this vision in a very real timeframe. I have been chosen to begin phase 1 of making this vision a reality. I will be working on creating an Educational Mars Simulation of human exploration of Mars to stimulate interest and involvement with the project from investors and the community. GRC s Computer Services Division (CSD) in collaboration with the Office of Education Programs will be designing models, constructing terrain, and programming this simulation to create a realistic portrayal of human exploration on mars. With recent and past technological breakthroughs in computing, my primary goal can be accomplished with only the aid of 3-4 software packages. Lightwave 3D is the modeling package we have selected to use for the creation of our digital objects. This includes a Mars pressurized rover, rover cockpit, landscape/terrain, and habitat. Once we have the models completed they need textured so Photoshop and Macromedia Fireworks are handy for bringing these objects to life. Before directly importing all of this data into a simulation environment, it is necessary to first render a stunning animation of the desired final product. This animation with represent what we hope to capture out of the simulation and it will include all of the accessories like ray-tracing, fog effects, shadows, anti-aliasing, particle effects, volumetric lighting, and lens flares. Adobe Premier will more than likely be used for video editing and adding ambient noises and music. Lastly, V-Tree is the real-time 3D graphics engine which will facilitate our realistic simulation. Additional information is included in the original extended abstract.

Henke, Stephen A.↗

NASA NTRS2005

Latency in Visionic Systems: Test Methods and Requirements

A visionics device creates a pictorial representation of the external scene for the pilot. The ultimate objective of these systems may be to electronically generate a form of Visual Meteorological Conditions (VMC) to eliminate weather or time-of-day as an operational constraint and provide enhancement over actual visual conditions where eye-limiting resolution may be a limiting factor. Empirical evidence has shown that the total system delays or latencies including the imaging sensors and display systems, can critically degrade their utility, usability, and acceptability. Definitions and measurement techniques are offered herein as common test and evaluation methods for latency testing in visionics device applications. Based upon available data, very different latency requirements are indicated based upon the piloting task, the role in which the visionics device is used in this task, and the characteristics of the visionics cockpit display device including its resolution, field-of-regard, and field-of-view. The least stringent latency requirements will involve Head-Up Display (HUD) applications, where the visionics imagery provides situational information as a supplement to symbology guidance and command information. Conversely, the visionics system latency requirement for a large field-of-view Head-Worn Display application, providing a Virtual-VMC capability from which the pilot will derive visual guidance, will be the most stringent, having a value as low as 20 msec.

Bailey, Randall E.↗

NASA NTRS2000

Satellite Broadcast of Graphical Weather Data Flight Tested

NASA Glenn Research Center at Lewis Field's aviation Weather Information Communications (WINCOMM) and NASA Langley Research Center's Aviation Weather Information (AWIN) programs collaborated in a flight test and evaluation of a worldwide weather data-link capability using satellites. This successful flight testing moves NASA closer to its goal of developing advanced communications and information technologies to enable high-quality and timely dissemination of aviation weather information to all relevant users on the aviation information network. Recognized as a major contributing factor in aviation accidents and incidents, weather contributes directly or indirectly to nearly 80 percent of fatal general aviation (small private aircraft) accidents. In 1997, the Aeronautics Safety Investment Strategy Team s weather team produced a prioritized list of investment areas under weather accident prevention. Weather data dissemination is the most critical and highest ranked priority on the list. NASA's Aviation Safety Program founded the Aviation Weather Information initiative to focus efforts on significantly reducing the number of weather-related aviation fatalities. Access to accurate and timely weather data could contribute to a major reduction of weather-related incidents and accidents. However, a cost-effective solution has eluded most general aviation pilots because of the high cost of onboard weather radar equipment. Rockwell Collins, through a contract with NASA and in cooperation with WorldSpace Corporation, successfully completed ground and flight testing of a receiver and antenna in Johannesburg, South Africa. This NASA/Rockwell Collins project is an evaluation of worldwide weather data-link capability using transmissions from the Satellite Digital Audio Radio Services (S DARS) AfriStar satellite. Owned and operated by WorldSpace, AfriStar is a geostationary satellite that broadcasts commercial digital audio services to stationary and mobile platforms. S DARS satellites are the most powerful communications satellites produced to date, allowing users to receive signals using simple, low-cost patch antennas instead of more expensive, beam-steered antenna arrays. Engineers connected an inexpensive, commercially available radio receiver to a laptop computer and an antenna designed and built by Rockwell Collins, enabling them to receive WorldSpace signals from the AfriStar satellite during flight tests. WorldSpace broadcast their composite color graphical weather data files, which were multiplexed with normal audio streams, to the flat patch antenna mounted on a single-engine aircraft. The aircraft was equipped with a modified commercial S-DARS receiver, a Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) receiver, and a laptop computer with color display. Continuous data reception occurred during normal aircraft maneuvers performed throughout takeoff, cruise, and landing operations. In addition, engineers monitored receiver power levels during steep turns and banks. In most instances, the receiver was able to maintain acceptable power levels during all phases of flight and to obtain weather data with little or with the successful completion of ground and flight testing of a receiver and antenna in Johannesburg, South Africa, the team has started to prepare for experiments using highspeed aircraft in areas of the world with limited access to timely weather data. NASA plans to provide a more advanced antenna design and consultation support. This successful test of real-time aviation-related weather data is a positive step toward solving communications-specific issues associated with the dissemination of weather data directly to the cockpit.

Mallasch, Paul G.↗

NASA NTRS2001

Fail-Safe Magnetic Bearing Controller Demonstrated Successfully

The Structural Mechanics and Dynamics Branch has successfully demonstrated a fail-safe controller for the Fault-Tolerant Magnetic Bearing rig at the NASA Glenn Research Center. The rotor is supported by two 8-pole redundant radial bearings, and coil failing situations are simulated by manually shutting down their control current commands from the controller cockpit. The effectiveness of the controller was demonstrated when only two active coils from each radial bearing could be used (that is, 14 coils failed). These remaining two coils still levitated the rotor and spun it without losing stability or desired position up to the maximum allowable speed of 20,000 rpm.

Choi, Benjamin B.↗

NASA NTRS2005

STS-114 Flight Day 9 Highlights

The highlight of Day 9 is the third extravehicular activity (EVA) of the STS-114 mission (Commander Eileen Collins, Pilot James Kelly, Mission Specialists Soichi Noguchi, Stephen Robinson, Andrew Thomas, Wendy Lawrence, and Charles Camarda). Astronauts Noguchi and Robinson are seen preparing for the EVA in the closed payload bay of Space Shuttle Discovery; on the EVA they install on the International Space Station (ISS) a Materials on the International Space Station Experiments (MISSE) unit, an External Stowage Platform (ESP-2), and a wireless antenna. The astronauts are seen working on the ISS under different lighting conditions, and use a pistol-grip tool to remove ESP-2 from the shuttle payload bay. The Space Station Remote Manipulator System then carries Robinson to the underside of the Discovery orbiter, where he communicates with Mission Control during the delicate and unprecedented removal of gap fillers from between the shuttle's tiles. Before and the after the EVA the video includes views of a damaged thermal blanket beneath the shuttle cockpit window. Other views of the shuttle include pans along the underside and topside by the Orbiter Boom Sensor System. The video also includes a view from orbit of Kazakhstan.

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NASA NTRS2003

An Indispensable Ingredient: Flight Research and Aircraft Design

Flight research-the art of flying actual vehicles in the atmosphere in order to collect data about their behavior-has played a historic and decisive role in the design of aircraft. Naturally, wind tunnel experiments, computational fluid dynamics, and mathematical analyses all informed the judgments of the individuals who conceived of new aircraft. But flight research has offered moments of realization found in no other method. Engineer Dale Reed and research pilot Milt Thompson experienced one such epiphany on March 1, 1963, at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration s Dryden Flight Research Center in Edwards, California. On that date, Thompson sat in the cockpit of a small, simple, gumdrop-shaped aircraft known as the M2-F1, lashed by a long towline to a late-model Pontiac Catalina. As the Pontiac raced across Rogers Dry Lake, it eventually gained enough speed to make the M2-F1 airborne. Thompson braced himself for the world s first flight in a vehicle of its kind, called a lifting body because of its high lift-to-drag ratio. Reed later recounted what he saw:

Gorn, Michael H.↗

NASA NTRS2005

Airdata Measurement and Calibration

This Section provides a brief introduction to airdata measurement and calibration. Readers will learn about typical test objectives, quantities to measure, and flight maneuvers and operations for calibration. The Section informs readers about tower-flyby, trailing cone, pacer, radar-tracking, and dynamic airdata calibration maneuvers. Readers will also begin to understand how some data analysis considerations and special airdata cases, including high-angle-of-attack flight, high-speed flight, and nonobtrusive sensors are handled. This section is not intended to be all inclusive; readers should review AGARDograph 300, Volume 1, "Calibration of Airdata Systems and Flow Direction Sensors" for more detailed information. [11-1] References 11-2, 11-3, and 11-4 also supply pertinent information to better understand airdata measurement and calibration and related terminology. Airdata are vital to successfully complete an aircraft's mission and are derived from the air surrounding the aircraft. These airdata encompass indicated and true airspeed, pressure altitude, ambient air temperature, angles of attack and sideslip, Mach number, and rate of climb. Typically, pitot and static pressures are sensed and converted (by mechanical means in the instruments themselves) into indications on the altimeter, vertical speed indicator, airspeed indicator, and Machmeter. Similarly, measured local flow angles establish angles of attack and sideslip, and the outside air temperature is measured and indicated in the cockpit. (Instruments that can perform the conversion, such as airspeed indicators, altimeters, and Machmeters, do not correct for errors in the input values.) These measured parameters are commonly input to the airdata computer which, using appropriate algorithms and correction factors (or calibrations, as discussed later), can provide other parameters, such as true airspeed, required by the aircraft's avionics or flight control system. The presence of the aircraft in the airstream causes input errors to the measuring instruments - the aircraft disturbs the air that it flies through, thereby also disturbing the airdata measurements. Figure 11-1 shows the airflow around an airplane wing. The air above the wing has lower pressure than the ambient air, while the pressure below the wing is higher than the ambient air. Compressibility and shock waves also disturb the air and affect the measurements. Compressibility effects become important above approximately Mach number 0.3. As a result the static pressure around an airplane varies considerably with location. Local flow angles also differ from the free-stream flow direction. In straight-and-level flight the airflow rises to the wing leading edge and falls below the trailing edge, causing errors in flow direction measurements. To some extent these errors can be studied in wind tunnels, but wind-tunnel measurements cannot replace in-flight measurements.

Haering, Edward A., Jr.↗

NASA NTRS2005

Intelligent Pilot Aids for Flight Re-Planning in Emergencies

Effective and safe control of an aircraft may be difficult or nearly impossible for a pilot following an unexpected system failure. Without prior training, the pilot must ascertain on the fly those changes in both manual control technique and procedures that will lead to a safe landing of the aircraft. Sophisticated techniques for determining the required control techniques are now available. Likewise, a body of literature on pilot decision making provides formalisms for examining how pilots approach discrete decisions framed as the selection between options. However, other aspects of behavior, such as the task of route planning and guidance, are not as well studied. Not only is the pilot faced with possible performance changes to the aircraft dynamics, but he or she is also tasked to create a plan of actions that will effectively take the aircraft down to a safe landing. In this plan, the many actions that the pilot can perform are closely intertwined with the trajectory of the aircraft, making it difficult to accurately predict the final outcome. Coupled with the vast number of potential actions to be taken, this problem may seem intractable. This is reflected in the lack of a pre-specified procedure capable of giving pilots the ability to find a resolution for this task. This report summarizes a multi-year effort to examine methods to aid pilots in planning an approach and arrival to an airport following an aircraft systems failure. Ultimately, we hypothesize that automatic assistance to pilots can be provided in real-time in the form of improving pilot control of a damaged aircraft and providing pilots with procedural directives suitable for critical flight conditions; such systems may also benefit pilot training and procedure design. To achieve this result, a systematic, comprehensive research program was followed, building on prior research. This approach included a pencil-and-paper study with airline pilots examining methods of representing a flight route in an immediately understandable manner, and in a manner that would allow the pilot to modify an automatically-generated route and/or detect any inappropriate elements in an automatically-generated route. Likewise, a flight simulator study examined different cockpit systems for the relative merits of providing pilots with any of a variety of automated functions for emergency flight planning. The results provide specific guidance for the design of such systems.

Pritchett, Amy R.↗

NASA NTRS2004

A Hybrid Synthetic Vision System for the Tele-operation of Unmanned Vehicles

A system called SmartCam3D (SC3D) has been developed to provide enhanced situational awareness for operators of a remotely piloted vehicle. SC3D is a Hybrid Synthetic Vision System (HSVS) that combines live sensor data with information from a Synthetic Vision System (SVS). By combining the dual information sources, the operators are afforded the advantages of each approach. The live sensor system provides real-time information for the region of interest. The SVS provides information rich visuals that will function under all weather and visibility conditions. Additionally, the combination of technologies allows the system to circumvent some of the limitations from each approach. Video sensor systems are not very useful when visibility conditions are hampered by rain, snow, sand, fog, and smoke, while a SVS can suffer from data freshness problems. Typically, an aircraft or satellite flying overhead collects the data used to create the SVS visuals. The SVS data could have been collected weeks, months, or even years ago. To that extent, the information from an SVS visual could be outdated and possibly inaccurate. SC3D was used in the remote cockpit during flight tests of the X-38 132 and 131R vehicles at the NASA Dryden Flight Research Center. SC3D was also used during the operation of military Unmanned Aerial Vehicles. This presentation will provide an overview of the system, the evolution of the system, the results of flight tests, and future plans. Furthermore, the safety benefits of the SC3D over traditional and pure synthetic vision systems will be discussed.

Delgado, Frank↗

NASA NTRS2005

Potential Interventions by Government and Industry to Minimize Violations of Temporary Flight Restrictions

This document enumerates interventions to reduce the frequency of restricted airspace violations, particularly those associated with temporary flight restrictions (TFRs) and air defense identification zones (ADIZs), by more effectively providing pilots with the information necessary to avoid such violations. Interventions are divided into both near term and far term groupings. Short term interventions, some variants of which are already in progress focus on improving the form and content of the textual Notices to Airmen (NOTAMs) as well as the graphical depiction of TFRs. A long-term technical intervention is proposed which would provide pilots the following functionality: ground and airborne presentation of information on any restricted airspace, including display on an electronic moving map, fully mechanized execution from the cockpit of the procedures required for entry into restricted airspaces that allow for entry, and alerting of the potential for TFR violations both during flight planning and while the aircraft is moving.

Zuschlag, Michael↗

NASA NTRS2005

The Small Aircraft Transportation System (SATS), Higher Volume Operations (HVO) Off-Nominal Operations

The ability to conduct concurrent, multiple aircraft operations in poor weather, at virtually any airport, offers an important opportunity for a significant increase in the rate of flight operations, a major improvement in passenger convenience, and the potential to foster growth of charter operations at small airports. The Small Aircraft Transportation System, (SATS) Higher Volume Operations (HVO) concept is designed to increase traffic flow at any of the 3400 nonradar, non-towered airports in the United States where operations are currently restricted to one-in/one-out procedural separation during Instrument Meteorological Conditions (IMC). The concept's key feature is pilots maintain their own separation from other aircraft using procedures, aircraft flight data sent via air-to-air datalink, cockpit displays, and on-board software. This is done within the Self-Controlled Area (SCA), an area of flight operations established during poor visibility or low ceilings around an airport without Air Traffic Control (ATC) services. The research described in this paper expands the HVO concept to include most off-nominal situations that could be expected to occur in a future SATS environment. The situations were categorized into routine off-nominal operations, procedural deviations, equipment malfunctions, and aircraft emergencies. The combination of normal and off-nominal HVO procedures provides evidence for an operational concept that is safe, requires little ground infrastructure, and enables concurrent flight operations in poor weather.

Baxley, B.↗

NASA NTRS2005

Mitigating Motion Base Safety Issues: The NASA LaRC CMF Implementation

The NASA Langley Research Center (LaRC), Cockpit Motion Facility (CMF) motion base design has taken advantage of inherent hydraulic characteristics to implement safety features using hardware solutions only. Motion system safety has always been a concern and its implementation is addressed differently by each organization. Some approaches rely heavily on software safety features. Software which performs safety functions is subject to more scrutiny making its approval, modification, and development time consuming and expensive. The NASA LaRC's CMF motion system is used for research and, as such, requires that the software be updated or modified frequently. The CMF's customers need the ability to update the simulation software frequently without the associated cost incurred with safety critical software. This paper describes the CMF engineering team's approach to achieving motion base safety by designing and implementing all safety features in hardware, resulting in applications software (including motion cueing and actuator dynamic control) being completely independent of the safety devices. This allows the CMF safety systems to remain intact and unaffected by frequent research system modifications.

Bryant, Richard B., Jr.↗

NASA NTRS2005

Discovering System Health Anomalies Using Data Mining Techniques

We present a data mining framework for the analysis and discovery of anomalies in high-dimensional time series of sensor measurements that would be found in an Integrated System Health Monitoring system. We specifically treat the problem of discovering anomalous features in the time series that may be indicative of a system anomaly, or in the case of a manned system, an anomaly due to the human. Identification of these anomalies is crucial to building stable, reusable, and cost-efficient systems. The framework consists of an analysis platform and new algorithms that can scale to thousands of sensor streams to discovers temporal anomalies. We discuss the mathematical framework that underlies the system and also describe in detail how this framework is general enough to encompass both discrete and continuous sensor measurements. We also describe a new set of data mining algorithms based on kernel methods and hidden Markov models that allow for the rapid assimilation, analysis, and discovery of system anomalies. We then describe the performance of the system on a real-world problem in the aircraft domain where we analyze the cockpit data from aircraft as well as data from the aircraft propulsion, control, and guidance systems. These data are discrete and continuous sensor measurements and are dealt with seamlessly in order to discover anomalous flights. We conclude with recommendations that describe the tradeoffs in building an integrated scalable platform for robust anomaly detection in ISHM applications.

Sriastava, Ashok, N.↗

NASA NTRS2006

A Simple Two Aircraft Conflict Resolution Algorithm

Conflict detection and resolution methods are crucial for distributed air-ground traffic management in which the crew in, the cockpit, dispatchers in operation control centers sad and traffic controllers in the ground-based air traffic management facilities share information and participate in the traffic flow and traffic control functions. This paper describes a conflict detection, and a conflict resolution method. The conflict detection method predicts the minimum separation and the time-to-go to the closest point of approach by assuming that both the aircraft will continue to fly at their current speeds along their current headings. The conflict resolution method described here is motivated by the proportional navigation algorithm, which is often used for missile guidance during the terminal phase. It generates speed and heading commands to rotate the line-of-sight either clockwise or counter-clockwise for conflict resolution. Once the aircraft achieve a positive range-rate and no further conflict is predicted, the algorithm generates heading commands to turn back the aircraft to their nominal trajectories. The speed commands are set to the optimal pre-resolution speeds. Six numerical examples are presented to demonstrate the conflict detection, and the conflict resolution methods.

Chatterji, Gano B.↗

NASA NTRS2006

Discovering Atypical Flights in Sequences of Discrete Flight Parameters

This paper describes the results of a novel research and development effort conducted at the NASA Ames Research Center for discovering anomalies in discrete parameter sequences recorded from flight data. Many of the discrete parameters that are recorded during the flight of a commercial airliner correspond to binary switches inside the cockpit. The inputs to our system are records from thousands of flights for a given class of aircraft and destination. The system delivers a list of potentially anomalous flights as well as reasons why the flight was tagged as anomalous. This output can be analyzed by safety experts to determine whether or not the anomalies are indicative of a problem that could be addressed with a human factors intervention. The final goal of the system is to help safety experts discover significant human factors issues such as pilot mode confusion, i.e., a flight in which a pilot has lost situational awareness as reflected in atypicality of the sequence of switches that he or she throws during descent compared to a population of similar flights. We view this work as an extension of Integrated System Health Management (ISHM) where the goal is to understand and evaluate the combined health of a class of aircraft ar a given destination.

Budalakoti, Suratna↗

NASA NTRS2005

3-D Highway in the Sky

If it were 50 years ago, NASA's contribution to rock and roll could have been more than just the all-astronaut rock band, Max Q, composed of six NASA astronauts, all of whom have flown aboard the Space Shuttle. If it were 50 years ago, a new NASA spinoff technology, Synthetic Vision, would likely have been able to prevent the fateful, small plane crash that killed rock and roll legends Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and The Big Bopper on that stormy night in 1959. Synthetic Vision is a new cockpit display system that helps pilots fly through bad weather, and it has incredible life-saving potential. In 1997, the White House Commission on Aviation Safety and Security created NASA s Aviation Safety and Security Program (AvSSP) with the aim of sounding the depths of NASA s cutting-edge aviation advances and history of successes. The AvSSP decided to use NASA technology to cut the rate of fatal aviation accidents that occur because of lowered visibility and spatial disorientation, common problems that arise in poor weather conditions, in the dark, or with inexperienced pilots.

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NASA NTRS2004

An Introduction to Flight Software Development: FSW Today, FSW 2010

Experience and knowledge gained from ongoing maintenance of Space Shuttle Flight Software and new development projects including Cockpit Avionics Upgrade are applied to projected needs of the National Space Exploration Vision through Spiral 2. Lessons learned from these current activities are applied to create a sustainable, reliable model for development of critical software to support Project Constellation. This presentation introduces the technologies, methodologies, and infrastructure needed to produce and sustain high quality software. It will propose what is needed to support a Vision for Space Exploration that places demands on the innovation and productivity needed to support future space exploration. The technologies in use today within FSW development include tools that provide requirements tracking, integrated change management, modeling and simulation software. Specific challenges that have been met include the introduction and integration of Commercial Off the Shelf (COTS) Real Time Operating System for critical functions. Though technology prediction has proved to be imprecise, Project Constellation requirements will need continued integration of new technology with evolving methodologies and changing project infrastructure. Targets for continued technology investment are integrated health monitoring and management, self healing software, standard payload interfaces, autonomous operation, and improvements in training. Emulation of the target hardware will also allow significant streamlining of development and testing. The methodologies in use today for FSW development are object oriented UML design, iterative development using independent components, as well as rapid prototyping . In addition, Lean Six Sigma and CMMI play a critical role in the quality and efficiency of the workforce processes. Over the next six years, we expect these methodologies to merge with other improvements into a consolidated office culture with all processes being guided by automated office assistants. The infrastructure in use today includes strict software development and configuration management procedures, including strong control of resource management and critical skills coverage. This will evolve to a fully integrated staff organization with efficient and effective communication throughout all levels guided by a Mission-Systems Architecture framework with focus on risk management and attention toward inevitable product obsolescence. This infrastructure of computing equipment, software and processes will itself be subject to technological change and need for management of change and improvement,

Gouvela, John↗