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At least 1,063 records · Page 59

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NASA NTRS2001

Searching for Organics, Fossils, and Biology on Mars

One of the goals of Astrobiology is to understand life on a fundamental level. All life on Earth is constructed from the same basic biochemical building blocks consisting of 20 amino acids with left handed symmetry, five nucleotides, a few sugars of right handed symmetry and some lipids. Using the metaphor of computers this is equivalent to saying that all life shares the same hardware. Beyond hardware similarity, it is now known that all life has fundamentally the same software. The genetic code of life is common to all organisms. Some have argued that the "hammer of evolution is heavy" and life anywhere is likely to be composed of identical biochemical and genetic patterns. However, in a system as complex as biochemistry it is likely that there are numerous local optima and the details of the optimum found by evolutionary selection on another world would likely depend on the initial conditions and random developments in the early biological history on that world. To address these fundamental questions in Astrobiology we need a second example of life: a second genesis.

McKay, Christopher P.↗

NASA NTRS2003

MSFC Turbomachinery Fluid Dynamics Roadmap

This viewgraph presentation provides an overview of future research issues and objectives of the Marshall Space Flight Center's Turbomachinery Fluid Dynamics team. Research focuses on developing and enhancing aerodynamic and hydrodynamic design tools and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis tools, applying these tools to development of hardware technology and concepts, and defining cold flow experiments to provide tool validation, technology and concept verification, and to further expand fluid dynamics knowledge and understanding.

Griffin, Lisa W.↗

NASA NTRS2001

Videogrammetric Model Deformation Measurement Technique

The theory, methods, and applications of the videogrammetric model deformation (VMD) measurement technique used at NASA for wind tunnel testing are presented. The VMD technique, based on non-topographic photogrammetry, can determine static and dynamic aeroelastic deformation and attitude of a wind-tunnel model. Hardware of the system includes a video-rate CCD camera, a computer with an image acquisition frame grabber board, illumination lights, and retroreflective or painted targets on a wind tunnel model. Custom software includes routines for image acquisition, target-tracking/identification, target centroid calculation, camera calibration, and deformation calculations. Applications of the VMD technique at five large NASA wind tunnels are discussed.

Burner, A. W.↗

NASA NTRS2000

How the science and engineering of spaceflight contribute to understanding the plasticity of spinal cord injury

Space programs support experimental investigations related to the unique environment of space and to the technological developments from many disciplines of both science and engineering that contribute to space studies. Furthermore, interactions between scientists, engineers and administrators, that are necessary for the success of any science mission in space, promote interdiscipline communication, understanding and interests which extend well beyond a specific mission. NASA-catalyzed collaborations have benefited the spinal cord rehabilitation program at UCLA in fundamental science and in the application of expertise and technologies originally developed for the space program. Examples of these benefits include: (1) better understanding of the role of load in maintaining healthy muscle and motor function, resulting in a spinal cord injury (SCI) rehabilitation program based on muscle/limb loading; (2) investigation of a potentially novel growth factor affected by spaceflight which may help regulate muscle mass; (3) development of implantable sensors, electronics and software to monitor and analyze long-term muscle activity in unrestrained subjects; (4) development of hardware to assist therapies applied to SCI patients; and (5) development of computer models to simulate stepping which will be used to investigate the effects of neurological deficits (muscle weakness or inappropriate activation) and to evaluate therapies to correct these deficiencies.

Review↗

NASA NTRS2004

A Discussion of Using a Reconfigurable Processor to Implement the Discrete Fourier Transform

This paper presents the design and implementation of the Discrete Fourier Transform (DFT) algorithm on a reconfigurable processor system. While highly applicable to many engineering problems, the DFT is an extremely computationally intensive algorithm. Consequently, the eventual goal of this work is to enhance the execution of a floating-point precision DFT algorithm by off loading the algorithm from the computing system. This computing system, within the context of this research, is a typical high performance desktop computer with an may of field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs). FPGAs are hardware devices that are configured by software to execute an algorithm. If it is desired to change the algorithm, the software is changed to reflect the modification, then download to the FPGA, which is then itself modified. This paper will discuss methodology for developing the DFT algorithm to be implemented on the FPGA. We will discuss the algorithm, the FPGA code effort, and the results to date.

White, Michael J.↗

NASA NTRS2009

R4SA for Controlling Robots

The R4SA GUI mentioned in the immediately preceding article is a userfriendly interface for controlling one or more robot(s). This GUI makes it possible to perform meaningful real-time field experiments and research in robotics at an unmatched level of fidelity, within minutes of setup. It provides such powerful graphing modes as that of a digitizing oscilloscope that displays up to 250 variables at rates between 1 and 200 Hz. This GUI can be configured as multiple intuitive interfaces for acquisition of data, command, and control to enable rapid testing of subsystems or an entire robot system while simultaneously performing analysis of data. The R4SA software establishes an intuitive component-based design environment that can be easily reconfigured for any robotic platform by creating or editing setup configuration files. The R4SA GUI enables event-driven and conditional sequencing similar to those of Mars Exploration Rover (MER) operations. It has been certified as part of the MER ground support equipment and, therefore, is allowed to be utilized in conjunction with MER flight hardware. The R4SA GUI could also be adapted to use in embedded computing systems, other than that of the MER, for commanding and real-time analysis of data.

Aghazarian, Hrand↗

NASA NTRS2012

NASA Tech Briefs, August 2012

Topics covered include: Mars Science Laboratory Drill; Ultra-Compact Motor Controller; A Reversible Thermally Driven Pump for Use in a Sub-Kelvin Magnetic Refrigerator; Shape Memory Composite Hybrid Hinge; Binding Causes of Printed Wiring Assemblies with Card-Loks; Coring Sample Acquisition Tool; Joining and Assembly of Bulk Metallic Glass Composites Through Capacitive Discharge; 670-GHz Schottky Diode-Based Subharmonic Mixer with CPW Circuits and 70-GHz IF; Self-Nulling Lock-in Detection Electronics for Capacitance Probe Electrometer; Discontinuous Mode Power Supply; Optimal Dynamic Sub-Threshold Technique for Extreme Low Power Consumption for VLSI; Hardware for Accelerating N-Modular Redundant Systems for High-Reliability Computing; Blocking Filters with Enhanced Throughput for X-Ray Microcalorimetry; High-Thermal-Conductivity Fabrics; Imidazolium-Based Polymeric Materials as Alkaline Anion-Exchange Fuel Cell Membranes; Electrospun Nanofiber Coating of Fiber Materials: A Composite Toughening Approach; Experimental Modeling of Sterilization Effects for Atmospheric Entry Heating on Microorganisms; Saliva Preservative for Diagnostic Purposes; Hands-Free Transcranial Color Doppler Probe; Aerosol and Surface Parameter Retrievals for a Multi-Angle, Multiband Spectrometer LogScope; TraceContract; AIRS Maps from Space Processing Software; POSTMAN: Point of Sail Tacking for Maritime Autonomous Navigation; Space Operations Learning Center; OVERSMART Reporting Tool for Flow Computations Over Large Grid Systems; Large Eddy Simulation (LES) of Particle-Laden Temporal Mixing Layers; Projection of Stabilized Aerial Imagery Onto Digital Elevation Maps for Geo-Rectified and Jitter-Free Viewing; Iterative Transform Phase Diversity: An Image-Based Object and Wavefront Recovery; 3D Drop Size Distribution Extrapolation Algorithm Using a Single Disdrometer; Social Networking Adapted for Distributed Scientific Collaboration; General Methodology for Designing Spacecraft Trajectories; Hemispherical Field-of-View Above-Water Surface Imager for Submarines; and Quantum-Well Infrared Photodetector (QWIP) Focal Plane Assembly.

Source record↗

NASA NTRS2008

NASA's Human Research Program at The Glenn Research Center: Progress and Opportunities

The NASA Human Research Program is aimed at correcting problems in critical areas that place NASA human spaceflight missions at risk due to shortfalls in astronaut health, safety and performance. The Glenn Research Center (GRC) and partners from Ohio are significant contributors to this effort. This presentation describes several areas of GRC emphasis, the first being NASA s path to creating exercise hardware requirements and protocols that mitigate the effects of long duration spaceflight. Computational simulations will be a second area that is discussed. This includes deterministic models that simulate the effects of spaceflight on the human body, as well as probabilistic models that bound and quantify the probability that adverse medical incidents will happen during an exploration mission. Medical technology development for exploration will be the final area to be discussed.

Nall, Marsha↗

NASA NTRS1997

The Automated Instrumentation and Monitoring System (AIMS): Design and Architecture

Whether a researcher is designing the 'next parallel programming paradigm', another 'scalable multiprocessor' or investigating resource allocation algorithms for multiprocessors, a facility that enables parallel program execution to be captured and displayed is invaluable. Careful analysis of such information can help computer and software architects to capture, and therefore, exploit behavioral variations among/within various parallel programs to take advantage of specific hardware characteristics. A software tool-set that facilitates performance evaluation of parallel applications on multiprocessors has been put together at NASA Ames Research Center under the sponsorship of NASA's High Performance Computing and Communications Program over the past five years. The Automated Instrumentation and Monitoring Systematic has three major software components: a source code instrumentor which automatically inserts active event recorders into program source code before compilation; a run-time performance monitoring library which collects performance data; and a visualization tool-set which reconstructs program execution based on the data collected. Besides being used as a prototype for developing new techniques for instrumenting, monitoring and presenting parallel program execution, AIMS is also being incorporated into the run-time environments of various hardware testbeds to evaluate their impact on user productivity. Currently, the execution of FORTRAN and C programs on the Intel Paragon and PALM workstations can be automatically instrumented and monitored. Performance data thus collected can be displayed graphically on various workstations. The process of performance tuning with AIMS will be illustrated using various NAB Parallel Benchmarks. This report includes a description of the internal architecture of AIMS and a listing of the source code.

Yan, Jerry C.↗

NASA NTRS1980

Microprocessor user support at Langley Research Center

The use of microprocessors pose significant problems including: (1) a long learning process for proficient use of microprocessors; (2) the requirement for extensive support in both hardware and software; and (3) the need for coordination and sharing of the creative effort to avoid unnecessary duplication. To address these problems, Langley Research Center has established a microprocessor users committee to provide an advisory interface for management and users, and is training microprocessor users. A newsletter is published to disseminate information among microprocessor users. Both cross software on the central computer complex and microprocessor development systems are used to support the design of microprocessor based systems. Each of these activities is reviewed with special emphasis given to the microprocessor support available from the central computer complex. The effectiveness of the approach being taken at Langley is assessed and specific hardware and software development efforts that are targeted toward enhancing the existing microprocessing support are discussed.

Tucker, J. H.↗

NASA NTRS2008

Cell-Detection Technique for Automated Patch Clamping

A unique and customizable machinevision and image-data-processing technique has been developed for use in automated identification of cells that are optimal for patch clamping. [Patch clamping (in which patch electrodes are pressed against cell membranes) is an electrophysiological technique widely applied for the study of ion channels, and of membrane proteins that regulate the flow of ions across the membranes. Patch clamping is used in many biological research fields such as neurobiology, pharmacology, and molecular biology.] While there exist several hardware techniques for automated patch clamping of cells, very few of those techniques incorporate machine vision for locating cells that are ideal subjects for patch clamping. In contrast, the present technique is embodied in a machine-vision algorithm that, in practical application, enables the user to identify good and bad cells for patch clamping in an image captured by a charge-coupled-device (CCD) camera attached to a microscope, within a processing time of one second. Hence, the present technique can save time, thereby increasing efficiency and reducing cost. The present technique involves the utilization of cell-feature metrics to accurately make decisions on the degree to which individual cells are "good" or "bad" candidates for patch clamping. These metrics include position coordinates (x,y) in the image plane, major-axis length, minor-axis length, area, elongation, roundness, smoothness, angle of orientation, and degree of inclusion in the field of view. The present technique does not require any special hardware beyond commercially available, off-the-shelf patch-clamping hardware: A standard patchclamping microscope system with an attached CCD camera, a personal computer with an imagedata- processing board, and some experience in utilizing imagedata- processing software are all that are needed. A cell image is first captured by the microscope CCD camera and image-data-processing board, then the image data are analyzed by software that implements the present machine-vision technique. This analysis results in the identification of cells that are "good" candidates for patch clamping (see figure). Once a "good" cell is identified, a patch clamp can be effected by an automated patchclamping apparatus or by a human operator. This technique has been shown to enable reliable identification of "good" and "bad" candidate cells for patch clamping. The ultimate goal in further development of this technique is to combine artificial-intelligence processing with instrumentation and controls in order to produce a complete "turnkey" automated patch-clamping system capable of accurately and reliably patch clamping cells with a minimum intervention by a human operator. Moreover, this technique can be adapted to virtually any cellular-analysis procedure that includes repetitive operation of microscope hardware by a human.

McDowell, Mark↗

NASA NTRS2004

Software for Probabilistic Risk Reduction

A computer program implements a methodology, denoted probabilistic risk reduction, that is intended to aid in planning the development of complex software and/or hardware systems. This methodology integrates two complementary prior methodologies: (1) that of probabilistic risk assessment and (2) a risk-based planning methodology, implemented in a prior computer program known as Defect Detection and Prevention (DDP), in which multiple requirements and the beneficial effects of risk-mitigation actions are taken into account. The present methodology and the software are able to accommodate both process knowledge (notably of the efficacy of development practices) and product knowledge (notably of the logical structure of a system, the development of which one seeks to plan). Estimates of the costs and benefits of a planned development can be derived. Functional and non-functional aspects of software can be taken into account, and trades made among them. It becomes possible to optimize the planning process in the sense that it becomes possible to select the best suite of process steps and design choices to maximize the expectation of success while remaining within budget.

Hensley, Scott↗

NASA NTRS1983

A fast, programmable hardware architecture for spaceborne SAR processing

The launch of spaceborne SARs during the 1980's is discussed. The satellite SARs require high quality and high throughput ground processors. Compression ratios in range and azimuth of greater than 500 and 150 respectively lead to frequency domain processing and data computation rates in excess of 2000 million real operations per second for C-band SARs under consideration. Various hardware architectures are examined and two promising candidates and proceeds to recommend a fast, programmable hardware architecture for spaceborne SAR processing are selected. Modularity and programmability are introduced as desirable attributes for the purpose of HTSP hardware selection.

Bennett, J. R.↗

NASA NTRS1989

Distributed execution of recovery blocks - An approach for uniform treatment of hardware and software faults in real-time applications

The concept of distributed execution of recovery blocks is examined as an approach for uniform treatment of hardware and software faults. A useful characteristic of the approach is the relatively small time cost it requires. The approach is thus suitable for incorporation into real-time computer systems. A specific formulation of the approach that is aimed at minimizing the recovery time is presented, called the distributed recovery block (DRB) scheme. The DRB scheme is capable of effecting forward recovery while handling both hardware and software faults in a uniform manner. An approach to incorporating the capability for multiprocessing scheme is also discussed. Two experiments aimed at testing the execution efficiency of the scheme in real-time applications have been conducted on two different multimicrocomputer networks. The results clearly indicate the feasibility of achieving tolerance of hardware and software faults in a broad range of real-time computer systems by use of the schemes for distributed execution of recovery blocks.

Kim, K. H.↗

NASA NTRS1996

Design and implementation of a Windows NT network to support CNC activities

The Manufacturing, Materials, & Processes Technology Division is undergoing dramatic changes to bring it's manufacturing practices current with today's technological revolution. The Division is developing Computer Automated Design and Computer Automated Manufacturing (CAD/CAM) abilities. The development of resource tracking is underway in the form of an accounting software package called Infisy. These two efforts will bring the division into the 1980's in relationship to manufacturing processes. Computer Integrated Manufacturing (CIM) is the final phase of change to be implemented. This document is a qualitative study and application of a CIM application capable of finishing the changes necessary to bring the manufacturing practices into the 1990's. The documentation provided in this qualitative research effort includes discovery of the current status of manufacturing in the Manufacturing, Materials, & Processes Technology Division including the software, hardware, network and mode of operation. The proposed direction of research included a network design, computers to be used, software to be used, machine to computer connections, estimate a timeline for implementation, and a cost estimate. Recommendation for the division's improvement include action to be taken, software to utilize, and computer configurations.

Shearrow, C. A.↗

NASA NTRS2000

A Very High Order, Adaptable MESA Implementation for Aeroacoustic Computations

Since computational efficiency and wave resolution scale with accuracy, the ideal would be infinitely high accuracy for problems with widely varying wavelength scales. Currently, many of the computational aeroacoustics methods are limited to 4th order accurate Runge-Kutta methods in time which limits their resolution and efficiency. However, a new procedure for implementing the Modified Expansion Solution Approximation (MESA) schemes, based upon Hermitian divided differences, is presented which extends the effective accuracy of the MESA schemes to 57th order in space and time when using 128 bit floating point precision. This new approach has the advantages of reducing round-off error, being easy to program. and is more computationally efficient when compared to previous approaches. Its accuracy is limited only by the floating point hardware. The advantages of this new approach are demonstrated by solving the linearized Euler equations in an open bi-periodic domain. A 500th order MESA scheme can now be created in seconds, making these schemes ideally suited for the next generation of high performance 256-bit (double quadruple) or higher precision computers. This ease of creation makes it possible to adapt the algorithm to the mesh in time instead of its converse: this is ideal for resolving varying wavelength scales which occur in noise generation simulations. And finally, the sources of round-off error which effect the very high order methods are examined and remedies provided that effectively increase the accuracy of the MESA schemes while using current computer technology.

Dydson, Roger W.↗

NASA NTRS2005

Vision Based Localization in Urban Environments

As part of DARPA's MARS2020 program, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory developed a vision-based system for localization in urban environments that requires neither GPS nor active sensors. System hardware consists of a pair of small FireWire cameras and a standard Pentium-based computer. The inputs to the software system consist of: 1) a crude grid-based map describing the positions of buildings, 2) an initial estimate of robot location and 3) the video streams produced by each camera. At each step during the traverse the system: captures new image data, finds image features hypothesized to lie on the outside of a building, computes the range to those features, determines an estimate of the robot's motion since the previous step and combines that data with the map to update a probabilistic representation of the robot's location. This probabilistic representation allows the system to simultaneously represent multiple possible locations, For our testing, we have derived the a priori map manually using non-orthorectified overhead imagery, although this process could be automated. The software system consists of two primary components. The first is the vision system which uses binocular stereo ranging together with a set of heuristics to identify features likely to be part of building exteriors and to compute an estimate of the robot's motion since the previous step. The resulting visual features and the associated range measurements are software component, a particle-filter based localization system. This system uses the map and the then fed to the second primary most recent results from the vision system to update the estimate of the robot's location. This report summarizes the design of both the hardware and software and will include the results of applying the system to the global localization of a robot over an approximately half-kilometer traverse across JPL'S Pasadena campus.

unmanned-ground vehicles↗

NASA NTRS2002

An Embedded Reconfigurable Logic Module

A Miniature Embedded Reconfigurable Computer and Logic (MERCAL) module has been developed and verified. MERCAL was designed to be a general-purpose, universal module that that can provide significant hardware and software resources to meet the requirements of many of today's complex embedded applications. This is accomplished in the MERCAL module by combining a sub credit card size PC in a DIMM form factor with a XILINX Spartan I1 FPGA. The PC has the ability to download program files to the FPGA to configure it for different hardware functions and to transfer data to and from the FPGA via the PC's ISA bus during run time. The MERCAL module combines, in a compact package, the computational power of a 133 MHz PC with up to 150,000 gate equivalents of digital logic that can be reconfigured by software. The general architecture and functionality of the MERCAL hardware and system software are described.

Tucker, Jerry H.↗