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At least 1,063 records · Page 59

A knowledge-based expert system for scheduling of airborne astronomical observations

KAOS (Kuiper Airborne Observatory Scheduler) is a knowledge-based expert system developed at NASA Ames Research Center to assist in route planning of a C-141 flying astronomical observatory. This program determines a sequence of flight legs that enables sequential observations of a set of heavenly bodies derived from a list of desirable objects. The possible flight legs are constrained by problems of observability, avoiding flyovers of warning and restricted military zones, and running out of fuel. A significant contribution of the KAOS program is that it couples computational capability with a reasoning system.

Nachtsheim, P. R.↗

Parallel scheduling of recursively defined arrays

A new method of automatic generation of concurrent programs which constructs arrays defined by sets of recursive equations is described. It is assumed that the time of computation of an array element is a linear combination of its indices, and integer programming is used to seek a succession of hyperplanes along which array elements can be computed concurrently. The method can be used to schedule equations involving variable length dependency vectors and mutually recursive arrays. Portions of the work reported here have been implemented in the PS automatic program generation system.

Myers, T. J.↗

Manned Mars mission schedule report

The schedules for hardware for the initial manned Mars mission are provided. The mission is determined to be a 1999 opposition mission and the vehicle hardware configuration for the mission is depicted.

Ferguson, W.↗

A knowledge-based expert system for scheduling of airborne astronomical observations

The Kuiper Airborne Observatory Scheduler (KAOS) is a knowledge-based expert system developed at NASA Ames Research Center to assist in route planning of a C-141 flying astronomical observatory. This program determines a sequence of flight legs that enables sequential observations of a set of heavenly bodies derived from a list of desirable objects. The possible flight legs are constrained by problems of observability, avoiding flyovers of warning and restricted military zones, and running out of fuel. A significant contribution of the KAOS program is that it couples computational capability with a reasoning system.

Nachtsheim, P. R.↗

Computer Scheduling Of Airplane Arrivals

Prototype computer-based system developed to assist air-traffic controllers in scheduling arrivals of many airplanes at airport and at designated points along approaches to airport. Designed to follow as many as 100 airplanes within radius of 150 nautical miles. Software written in Symbolics Zetalisp language.

Tobias, L.↗

Task path planning, scheduling and learning for free-ranging robot systems

The development of robotics applications for space operations is often restricted by the limited movement available to guided robots. Free ranging robots can offer greater flexibility than physically guided robots in these applications. Presented here is an object oriented approach to path planning and task scheduling for free-ranging robots that allows the dynamic determination of paths based on the current environment. The system also provides task learning for repetitive jobs. This approach provides a basis for the design of free-ranging robot systems which are adaptable to various environments and tasks.

Wakefield, G. Steve↗

An AI approach for scheduling space-station payloads at Kennedy Space Center

The Payload Processing for Space-Station Operations (PHITS) is a prototype modeling tool capable of addressing many Space Station related concerns. The system's object oriented design approach coupled with a powerful user interface provide the user with capabilities to easily define and model many applications. PHITS differs from many artificial intelligence based systems in that it couples scheduling and goal-directed simulation to ensure that on-orbit requirement dates are satisfied.

Castillo, D.↗

A traveling-salesman-based approach to aircraft scheduling in the terminal area

An efficient algorithm is presented, based on the well-known algorithm for the traveling salesman problem, for scheduling aircraft arrivals into major terminal areas. The algorithm permits, but strictly limits, reassigning an aircraft from its initial position in the landing order. This limitation is needed so that no aircraft or aircraft category is unduly penalized. Results indicate, for the mix of arrivals investigated, a potential increase in capacity in the 3 to 5 percent range. Furthermore, it is shown that the computation time for the algorithm grows only linearly with problem size.

Luenberger, Robert A.↗

A knowledge-based decision support system for payload scheduling

The role that artificial intelligence/expert systems technologies play in the development and implementation of effective decision support systems is illustrated. A recently developed prototype system for supporting the scheduling of subsystems and payloads/experiments for NASA's Space Station program is presented and serves to highlight various concepts. The potential integration of knowledge based systems and decision support systems which has been proposed in several recent articles and presentations is illustrated.

Floyd, Stephen↗

Lisp Object State Saver (LOSS): A facility used to save partial schedules of the Hubble Space Telescope

Current research in the area of long term scheduling of the Hubble Space Telescope is being done using Common Lisp and Flavors on Lisp Machines. The planning tools manipulate memory-resident data structures which represent the many entities and relationships that represent planning states. The Lisp Object State Saver (LOSS), a general purpose utility, was constructed which allows one to take a snapshot of memory by storing a representation of the structures in a text file. This text file can later be loaded thus restoring the pre-existing and logically equivalent planning state. A LOSS template must be created for each datatype to be stored and a simple grammar governs the creation of such templates.

Sponsler, Jeffrey L.↗

Application of gain scheduling to the control of batch bioreactors

The implementation of control algorithms to batch bioreactors is often complicated by the inherent variations in process dynamics during the course of fermentation. Such a wide operating range may render the performance of fixed gain PID controllers unsatisfactory. In this work, a detailed study on the control of batch fermentation is performed. Furthermore, a simple batch controller design is proposed which incorporates the concept of gain-scheduling, a subclass of adaptive control, with oxygen uptake rate as an auxiliary variable. The control of oxygen tension in the biorector is used as a vehicle to convey the proposed idea, analysis and results. Simulation experiments indicate significant improvement in controller performance can be achieved by the proposed approach even in the presence of measurement noise.

Cardello, Ralph↗

A knowledge-based decision support system for payload scheduling

This paper presents the development of a prototype Knowledge-based Decision Support System, currently under development, for scheduling payloads/experiments on space station missions. The DSS is being built on Symbolics, a Lisp machine, using KEE, a commercial knowledge engineering tool.

Tyagi, Rajesh↗

Automatic Scheduling and Planning (ASAP) in future ground control systems

This report describes two complementary approaches to the problem of space mission planning and scheduling. The first is an Expert System or Knowledge-Based System for automatically resolving most of the activity conflicts in a candidate plan. The second is an Interactive Graphics Decision Aid to assist the operator in manually resolving the residual conflicts which are beyond the scope of the Expert System. The two system designs are consistent with future ground control station activity requirements, support activity timing constraints, resource limits and activity priority guidelines.

Matlin, Sam↗

Run-time parallelization and scheduling of loops

The class of problems that can be effectively compiled by parallelizing compilers is discussed. This is accomplished with the doconsider construct which would allow these compilers to parallelize many problems in which substantial loop-level parallelism is available but cannot be detected by standard compile-time analysis. We describe and experimentally analyze mechanisms used to parallelize the work required for these types of loops. In each of these methods, a new loop structure is produced by modifying the loop to be parallelized. We also present the rules by which these loop transformations may be automated in order that they be included in language compilers. The main application area of the research involves problems in scientific computations and engineering. The workload used in our experiment includes a mixture of real problems as well as synthetically generated inputs. From our extensive tests on the Encore Multimax/320, we have reached the conclusion that for the types of workloads we have investigated, self-execution almost always performs better than pre-scheduling. Further, the improvement in performance that accrues as a result of global topological sorting of indices as opposed to the less expensive local sorting, is not very significant in the case of self-execution.

Saltz, Joel H.↗

Space languages: Solving the classic scheduling problem in Ada and Lisp

The comparison of programming languages is best seen while evaluating similar systems. The strengths and weaknesses of both languages were investigated as the scheduler was being implemented. Some features used in both languages shall be object-oriented paradigms, parallel programming, search and production heuristics, and other classical artificial intelligence implementations.

Davis, Stephen↗

Mission scheduling

How a neural network can work, compared to a hybrid system based on an operations research and artificial intelligence approach, is investigated through a mission scheduling problem. The characteristic features of each system are discussed.

Gaspin, Christine↗

Planning and scheduling in AI

An account is given of the many related activities employing AI that are classifiable as 'automatic planning and scheduling'. A human can form plans and successfully execute them, but no current automatic-planning AI system can match this robustness and generality; it is in fact suggested that automatic planning is unlikely to be achieved by a general-purpose planning system. It is judged likely that partially-specialized planners will emerge for the efficient solution of specific classes of problems. Current planners are also found to make unrealistic informational demands, especially in the requirement that the 'state of the world' be known at all times, and that the only changes that occur are under the planner's control.

Cheeseman, Peter↗

Algorithm Schedules Airplane Landings

Algorithm schedules arrivals of airplanes to reduce average or overall landing delay. Rearranges order of landing according to weight class of each airplane. Limits extent of one rearrangement to avoid penalizing any airplane or category of airplanes.

Luenberger, Robert A.↗