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NASA NTRS2003

"Virtual Cockpit Window" for a Windowless Aerospacecraft

A software system processes navigational and sensory information in real time to generate a three-dimensional-appearing image of the external environment for viewing by crewmembers of a windowless aerospacecraft. The design of the particular aerospacecraft (the X-38) is such that the addition of a real transparent cockpit window to the airframe would have resulted in unacceptably large increases in weight and cost. When exerting manual control, an aircrew needs to see terrain, obstructions, and other features around the aircraft in order to land safely. The X-38 is capable of automated landing, but even when this capability is utilized, the crew still needs to view the external environment: From the very beginning of the United States space program, crews have expressed profound dislike for windowless vehicles. The wellbeing of an aircrew is considerably promoted by a three-dimensional view of terrain and obstructions. The present software system was developed to satisfy the need for such a view. In conjunction with a computer and display equipment that weigh less than would a real transparent window, this software system thus provides a virtual cockpit window. The key problem in the development of this software system was to create a realistic three-dimensional perspective view that is updated in real time. The problem was solved by building upon a pre-existing commercial program LandForm C3 that combines the speed of flight-simulator software with the power of geographic-information-system software to generate real-time, three-dimensional-appearing displays of terrain and other features of flight environments. In the development of the present software, the pre-existing program was modified to enable it to utilize real-time information on the position and attitude of the aerospacecraft to generate a view of the external world as it would appear to a person looking out through a window in the aerospacecraft. The development included innovations in realistic horizon-limit modeling, three-dimensional stereographic display, and interfaces for utilization of data from inertial-navigation devices, Global Positioning System receivers, and laser rangefinders.

Abernathy, Michael F.↗

NASA NTRS1993

Evaluation of advanced displays for engine monitoring and control

The relative effectiveness of two advanced display concepts for monitoring engine performance for commercial transport aircraft was studied. The concepts were the Engine Monitoring and Control System (EMACS) display developed by NASA Langley and a display by exception design. Both of these concepts were based on the philosophy of providing information that is directly related to the pilot's task. Both concepts used a normalized thrust display. In addition, EMACS used column deviation indicators; i.e., the difference between the actual parameter value and the value predicted by an engine model, for engine health monitoring; while the Display by Exception displayed the engine parameters if the automated system detected a difference between the actual and the predicted values. The results showed that the advanced display concepts had shorter detection and response times. There were no differences in any of the results between manual and auto throttles. There were no effects upon perceived workload or performance on the primary flight task. The majority of pilots preferred the advanced displays and thought they were operationally acceptable. Certification of these concepts depends on the validation of the engine model. Recommendations are made to improve both the EMACS and the display by exception display formats.

Summers, L. G.↗

NASA NTRS2000

Towards Evolving Electronic Circuits for Autonomous Space Applications

The relatively new field of Evolvable Hardware studies how simulated evolution can reconfigure, adapt, and design hardware structures in an automated manner. Space applications, especially those requiring autonomy, are potential beneficiaries of evolvable hardware. For example, robotic drilling from a mobile platform requires high-bandwidth controller circuits that are difficult to design. In this paper, we present automated design techniques based on evolutionary search that could potentially be used in such applications. First, we present a method of automatically generating analog circuit designs using evolutionary search and a circuit construction language. Our system allows circuit size (number of devices), circuit topology, and device values to be evolved. Using a parallel genetic algorithm, we present experimental results for five design tasks. Second, we investigate the use of coevolution in automated circuit design. We examine fitness evaluation by comparing the effectiveness of four fitness schedules. The results indicate that solution quality is highest with static and co-evolving fitness schedules as compared to the other two dynamic schedules. We discuss these results and offer two possible explanations for the observed behavior: retention of useful information, and alignment of problem difficulty with circuit proficiency.

Lohn, Jason D.↗

NASA NTRS2002

REACH: Real-Time Data Awareness in Multi-Spacecraft Missions

Missions have been proposed that will use multiple spacecraft to perform scientific or commercial tasks. Indeed, in the commercial world, some spacecraft constellations already exist. Aside from the technical challenges of constructing and flying these missions, there is also the financial challenge presented by the tradition model of the flight operations team (FOT) when it is applied to a constellation mission. Proposed constellation missions range in size from three spacecraft to more than 50. If the current ratio of three-to-five FOT personnel per spacecraft is maintained, the size of the FOT becomes cost prohibitive. The Advanced Architectures and Automation Branch at the Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC Code 588) saw the potential to reduce the cost of these missions by creating new user interfaces to the ground system health-and-safety data. The goal is to enable a smaller FOT to remain aware and responsive to the increased amount of ground system information in a multi-spacecraft environment. Rather than abandon the tried and true, these interfaces were developed to run alongside existing ground system software to provide additional support to the FOT. These new user interfaces have been combined in a tool called REACH. REACH-the Real-time Evaluation and Analysis of Consolidated Health-is a software product that uses advanced visualization techniques to make spacecraft anomalies easy to spot, no matter how many spacecraft are in the constellation. REACH reads a real-time stream of data from the ground system and displays it to the FOT such that anomalies are easy to pick out and investigate. Data visualization has been used in ground system operations for many years. To provide a unique visualization tool, we developed a unique source of data to visualize: the REACH Health Model Engine. The Health Model Engine is rule-based software that receives real-time telemetry information and outputs "health" information related to the subsystems and spacecraft that the telemetry belong to. The Health Engine can run out-of-the-box or can be tailored with a scripting language. Out of the box, it uses limit violations to determine the health of subsystems and spacecraft; when tailored, it determines health using equations combining the values and limits of any telemetry in the spacecraft. The REACH visualizations then "roll up" the information from the Health Engine into high level, summary displays. These summary visualizations can be "zoomed" into for increasing levels of detail. Currently REACH is installed in the Small Explorer (SMEX) lab at GSFC, and is monitoring three of their five spacecraft. We are scheduled to install REACH in the Mid-sized Explorer (MIDEX) lab, which will allow us to monitor up to six more spacecraft. The process of installing and using our "research" software in an operational environment has provided many insights into which parts of REACH are a step forward and which of our ideas are missteps. Our paper explores both the new concepts in spacecraft health-and-safety visualization, the difficulties of such systems in the operational environment, and the cost and safety issues of multi-spacecraft missions.

Maks, Lori↗

NASA NTRS2001

External Data and Attribute Hyperlink Programs for Promis*e(Registered Trademark)

External Data and Attribute Hyperlink are computer programs that can be added to Promis*e(trademark) which is a commercial software system that automates routine tasks in the design (including drawing schematic diagrams) of electrical control systems. The programs were developed under the Stennis Space Center's (SSC) Dual Use Technology Development Program to provide capabilities for SSC's BMCS configuration management system which uses Promis*e(trademark). The External Data program enables the storage and management of information in an external database linked to a drawing. Changes can be made either in the database or on the drawing. Information that originates outside Promis*e(trademark) can be stored in custom fields that can be added to the database. Although this information is not available in Promis*e(trademark) printed drawings, it can be associated with symbols in the drawings, and can be retrieved through the drawings when the software is running. The Attribute Hyperlink program enables the addition of hyperlink information as attributes of symbols. This program enables the formation of a direct hyperlink between a schematic diagram and an Internet site or a file on a compact disk, on the user's hard drive, or on another computer on a network to which the user's computer is connected. The user can then obtain information directly related to the part (e.g., maintenance, or troubleshooting information) associated with the hyperlink.

Derengowski, Rich↗

NASA NTRS2002

Electron Density Profiles of the Topside Ionosphere

The existing uncertainties about the electron density profiles in the topside ionosphere, i.e., in the height region from h,F2 to - 2000 km, require the search for new data sources. The ISIS and Alouette topside sounder satellites from the sixties to the eighties recorded millions of ionograms but most were not analyzed in terms of electron density profiles. In recent years an effort started to digitize the analog recordings to prepare the ionograms for computerized analysis. As of November 2001 about 350000 ionograms have been digitized from the original 7-track analog tapes. These data are available in binary and CDF format from the anonymous ftp site of the National Space Science Data Center. A search site and browse capabilities on CDAWeb assist the scientific usage of these data. All information and access links can be found at http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/space/isis/isis- status.htm1. This paper describes the ISIS data restoration effort and shows how the digital ionograms are automatically processed into electron density profiles from satellite orbit altitude (1400 km for ISIS-2) down to the F peak. Because of the large volume of data an automated processing algorithm is imperative. The TOPside Ionogram Scaler with True height algorithm TOPIST software developed for this task is successfully scaling - 70% of the ionograms. An < > is available to manually scale the more difficult ionograms. The automated processing of the digitized ISIS ionograms is now underway, producing a much-needed database of topside electron density profiles for ionospheric modeling covering more than one solar cycle.

Huang, Xue-Qin↗

NASA NTRS2007

Emergency Response Fire-Imaging UAS Missions over the Southern California Wildfire Disaster

Objectives include: Demonstrate capabilities of UAS to overfly and collect sensor data on widespread fires throughout Western US. Demonstrate long-endurance mission capabilities (20-hours+). Image multiple fires (greater than 4 fires per mission), to showcase extendable mission configuration and ability to either linger over key fires or station over disparate regional fires. Demonstrate new UAV-compatible, autonomous sensor for improved thermal characterization of fires. Provide automated, on-board, terrain and geo-rectified sensor imagery over OTH satcom links to national fire personnel and Incident commanders. Deliver real-time imagery (within 10-minutes of acquisition). Demonstrate capabilities of OTS technologies (GoogleEarth) to serve and display mission-critical sensor data, coincident with other pertinent data elements to facilitate information processing (WX data, ground asset data, other satellite data, R/T video, flight track info, etc).

Cobleigh, Brent R.↗

NASA NTRS2008

Emergency Response Fire-Imaging UAS Missions over the Southern California Wildfire Disaster

DelFrate, John H.↗

NASA NTRS2000

System and Propagation Availability Analysis for NASA's Advanced Air Transportation Technologies

This report summarizes the research on the System and Propagation Availability Analysis for NASA's project on Advanced Air Transportation Technologies (AATT). The objectives of the project were to determine the communication systems requirements and architecture, and to investigate the effect of propagation on the transmission of space information. In this report, results from the first year investigation are presented and limitations are highlighted. To study the propagation links, an understanding of the total system architecture is necessary since the links form the major component of the overall architecture. This study was conducted by way of analysis, modeling and simulation on the system communication links. The overall goals was to develop an understanding of the space communication requirements relevant to the AATT project, and then analyze the links taking into consideration system availability under adverse atmospheric weather conditions. This project began with a preliminary study of the end-to-end system architecture by modeling a representative communication system in MATLAB SIMULINK. Based on the defining concepts, the possibility of computer modeling was determined. The investigations continue with the parametric studies of the communication system architecture. These studies were also carried out with SIMULINK modeling and simulation. After a series of modifications, two end-to-end communication links were identified as the most probable models for the communication architecture. Link budget calculations were then performed in MATHCAD and MATLAB for the identified communication scenarios. A remarkable outcome of this project is the development of a graphic user interface (GUI) program for the computation of the link budget parameters in real time. Using this program, one can interactively compute the link budget requirements after supplying a few necessary parameters. It provides a framework for the eventual automation of several computations required in many experimental NASA missions. For the first year of this project, most of the stated objectives were accomplished. We were able to identify probable communication systems architectures, model and analyze several communication links, perform numerous simulation on different system models, and then develop a program for the link budget analysis. However, most of the work is still unfinished. The effect of propagation on the transmission of information in the identified communication channels has not been performed. Propagation effects cannot be studied until the system under consideration is identified and characterized. To study the propagation links, an understanding of the total communications architecture is necessary. It is important to mention that the original project was intended for two years and the results presented here are only for the first year of research. It is prudent therefore that these efforts be continued in order to obtain a complete picture of the system and propagation availability requirements.

Ugweje, Okechukwu C.↗

NASA NTRS1982

Automated procedure for developing hybrid computer simulations of turbofan engines. Part 1: General description

A systematic, computer-aided, self-documenting methodology for developing hybrid computer simulations of turbofan engines is presented. The methodology that is pesented makes use of a host program that can run on a large digital computer and a machine-dependent target (hybrid) program. The host program performs all the calculations and data manipulations that are needed to transform user-supplied engine design information to a form suitable for the hybrid computer. The host program also trims the self-contained engine model to match specified design-point information. Part I contains a general discussion of the methodology, describes a test case, and presents comparisons between hybrid simulation and specified engine performance data. Part II, a companion document, contains documentation, in the form of computer printouts, for the test case.

Szuch, J. R.↗

NASA NTRS1990

Establishing a communications-intensive network to resolve artificial intelligence issues within NASA's Space Station Freedom research centers community

MITRE Corporation's, A Review of Space Station Freedom Program Capabilities for the Development and Application of Advanced Automation, cites as a critical issue the following situation, extant at the NASA facilities visited in the course of preparing the review: The major issues noted with regard to design and research facilities deal with cooperative problem solving, technology transfer, and communication between these facilities. While the authors were visiting lab and test beds to collect information, personnel at many of these facilities were interested in any information they could collect on activities at other facilities. A formal means of gathering this information could not be identified by these personnel. While communication between some facilities was taking place or was planned, for technology transfer or coordination of schedules (e.g., for SADP demonstrations), poor communication between these facilities could lead to a lack of technical standards, duplication of effort, poorly defined interfaces, scheduling problems, and increased cost. Formal mechanisms by which effective communication and cooperative problem solving can take place, and information can be disseminated, must be defined. A solution is proposed for the communications aspects of the issues addressed above; and offered at the same time a solution which can prove effective in dealing with some of the problems being encountered with expertise being lost via retirement or defection to the private sector. The proffered recommendations are recognizably cost-effective and tap the rising sector of expert knowledge being produced by the American academic community.

Howard, E. Davis, III↗

NASA NTRS1992

Improved image classification with neural networks by fusing multispectral signatures with topological data

Automated schemes are needed to classify multispectral remotely sensed data. Human intelligence is often required to correctly interpret images from satellites and aircraft. Humans suceed because they use various types of cues about a scene to accurately define the contents of the image. Consequently, it follows that computer techniques that integrate and use different types of information would perform better than single source approaches. This research illustrated that multispectral signatures and topographical information could be used in concert. Significantly, this dual source tactic classified a remotely sensed image better than the multispectral classification alone. These classifications were accomplished by fusing spectral signatures with topographical information using neural network technology. A neural network was trained to classify Landsat mulitspectral signatures. A file of georeferenced ground truth classifications were used as the training criterion. The network was trained to classify urban, agriculture, range, and forest with an accuracy of 65.7 percent. Another neural network was programmed and trained to fuse these multispectral signature results with a file of georeferenced altitude data. This topological file contained 10 levels of elevations. When this nonspectral elevation information was fused with the spectral signatures, the classifications were improved to 73.7 and 75.7 percent.

Harston, Craig↗

NASA NTRS1994

Designing an autonomous environment for mission critical operation of the EUVE satellite

Since the launch of NASA's Extreme Ultraviolet Explorer (EUVE) satellite in 1992, there has only been a handful of occurrences that have warranted manual intervention in the EUVE Science Operations Center (ESOC). So, in an effort to reduce costs, the current environment is being redesigned to utilize a combination of off-the-shelf packages and recently developed artificial intelligence (AI) software to automate the monitoring of the science payload and ground systems. The successful implementation of systemic automation would allow the ESOC to evolve from a seven day/week, three shift operation, to a seven day/week one shift operation. First, it was necessary to identify all areas considered mission critical. These were defined as follows: (1) The telemetry stream must be monitored autonomously and anomalies identified. (2) Duty personnel must be automatically paged and informed of the occurrence of an anomaly. (3) The 'basic' state of the ground system must be assessed. (4) Monitors should check that the systems and processes needed to continue in a 'healthy' operational mode are working at all times. (5) Network loads should be monitored to ensure that they stay within established limits. (6) Connectivity to Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) systems should be monitored as well, not just for connectivity of the network itself but also for the ability to transfer files. (7) All necessary peripheral devices should be monitored. This would include the disks, routers, tape drives, printers, tape carousel, and power supplies. (8) System daemons such as the archival daemon, the Sybase server, the payload monitoring software, and any other necessary processes should be monitored to ensure that they are operational. (9) The monitoring system needs to be redundant so that the failure of a single machine will not paralyze the monitors. (10) Notification should be done by means of looking though a table of the pager numbers for current 'on call' personnel. The software should be capable of dialing out to notify, sending email, and producing error logs. (11) The system should have knowledge of when real-time passes and tape recorder dumps will occur and should know that these passes and data transmissions are successful. Once the design criteria were established, the design team split into two groups: one that addressed the tracking, commanding, and health and safety of the science payload and another group that addressed the ground systems and communications aspects of the overall system.

Abedini, Annadiana↗

NASA NTRS2017

Autonomous System Technologies for Resilient Airspace Operations

Increasing autonomous systems within the aircraft cockpit begins with an effort to understand what autonomy is and developing the technology that encompasses it. Autonomy allows an agent, human or machine, to act independently within a circumscribed set of goals; delegating responsibility to the agent(s) to achieve overall system objective(s). Increasingly Autonomous Systems (IAS) are the highly sophisticated progression of current automated systems toward full autonomy. Working in concert with humans, these types of technologies are expected to improve the safety, reliability, costs, and operational efficiency of aviation. IAS implementation is imminent, which makes the development and the proper performance of such technologies, with respect to cockpit operation efficiency, the management of air traffic and data communication information, vital. A prototype IAS agent that attempts to optimize the identification and distribution of "relevant" air traffic data to be utilized by human crews during complex airspace operations has been developed.

Houston, Vincent E.↗

NASA NTRS2013

The DEEP2 Galaxy Redshift Survey: Design, Observations, Data Reduction, and Redshifts

We describe the design and data analysis of the DEEP2 Galaxy Redshift Survey, the densest and largest high-precision redshift survey of galaxies at z approx. 1 completed to date. The survey was designed to conduct a comprehensive census of massive galaxies, their properties, environments, and large-scale structure down to absolute magnitude MB = −20 at z approx. 1 via approx.90 nights of observation on the Keck telescope. The survey covers an area of 2.8 Sq. deg divided into four separate fields observed to a limiting apparent magnitude of R(sub AB) = 24.1. Objects with z approx. < 0.7 are readily identifiable using BRI photometry and rejected in three of the four DEEP2 fields, allowing galaxies with z > 0.7 to be targeted approx. 2.5 times more efficiently than in a purely magnitude-limited sample. Approximately 60% of eligible targets are chosen for spectroscopy, yielding nearly 53,000 spectra and more than 38,000 reliable redshift measurements. Most of the targets that fail to yield secure redshifts are blue objects that lie beyond z approx. 1.45, where the [O ii] 3727 Ang. doublet lies in the infrared. The DEIMOS 1200 line mm(exp −1) grating used for the survey delivers high spectral resolution (R approx. 6000), accurate and secure redshifts, and unique internal kinematic information. Extensive ancillary data are available in the DEEP2 fields, particularly in the Extended Groth Strip, which has evolved into one of the richest multiwavelength regions on the sky. This paper is intended as a handbook for users of the DEEP2 Data Release 4, which includes all DEEP2 spectra and redshifts, as well as for the DEEP2 DEIMOS data reduction pipelines. Extensive details are provided on object selection, mask design, biases in target selection and redshift measurements, the spec2d two-dimensional data-reduction pipeline, the spec1d automated redshift pipeline, and the zspec visual redshift verification process, along with examples of instrumental signatures or other artifacts that in some cases remain after data reduction. Redshift errors and catastrophic failure rates are assessed through more than 2000 objects with duplicate observations. Sky subtraction is essentially photon-limited even under bright OH sky lines; we describe the strategies that permitted this, based on high image stability, accurate wavelength solutions, and powerful B-spline modeling methods. We also investigate the impact of targets that appear to be single objects in ground-based targeting imaging but prove to be composite in Hubble Space Telescope data; they constitute several percent of targets at z approx. 1, approaching approx. 5%-10% at z > 1.5. Summary data are given that demonstrate the superiority of DEEP2 over other deep high-precision redshift surveys at z approx. 1 in terms of redshift accuracy, sample number density, and amount of spectral information. We also provide an overview of the scientific highlights of the DEEP2 survey thus far.

Galaxy↗

NASA NTRS1975

Increasing the reliability of labor of railroad engineers

It has been shown that the group of problems related to temporary overloads still require serious development with respect to further automating the basic control operation - programmed selection of speed and braking. The problem of systems for warning the engineer about the condition of the unseen track segments remains a very serious one. Systems of hygenic support of the engineer also require constructive development. The problems of ensuring the reliability of work of engineers in periods of low information load, requiring motor acts, can basically be considered theoretically solved.

Genes, V. S.↗

NASA NTRS1988

Automatic programming for critical applications

The important phases of a software life cycle include verification and maintenance. Usually, the execution performance is an expected requirement in a software development process. Unfortunately, the verification and the maintenance of programs are the time consuming and the frustrating aspects of software engineering. The verification cannot be waived for the programs used for critical applications such as, military, space, and nuclear plants. As a consequence, synthesis of programs from specifications, an alternative way of developing correct programs, is becoming popular. The definition, or what is understood by automatic programming, has been changed with our expectations. At present, the goal of automatic programming is the automation of programming process. Specifically, it means the application of artificial intelligence to software engineering in order to define techniques and create environments that help in the creation of high level programs. The automatic programming process may be divided into two phases: the problem acquisition phase and the program synthesis phase. In the problem acquisition phase, an informal specification of the problem is transformed into an unambiguous specification while in the program synthesis phase such a specification is further transformed into a concrete, executable program.

Loganantharaj, Raj L.↗

NASA NTRS1998

Testing, Requirements, and Metrics

The criticality of correct, complete, testable requirements is a fundamental tenet of software engineering. Also critical is complete requirements based testing of the final product. Modern tools for managing requirements allow new metrics to be used in support of both of these critical processes. Using these tools, potential problems with the quality of the requirements and the test plan can be identified early in the life cycle. Some of these quality factors include: ambiguous or incomplete requirements, poorly designed requirements databases, excessive or insufficient test cases, and incomplete linkage of tests to requirements. This paper discusses how metrics can be used to evaluate the quality of the requirements and test to avoid problems later. Requirements management and requirements based testing have always been critical in the implementation of high quality software systems. Recently, automated tools have become available to support requirements management. At NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC), automated requirements management tools are being used on several large projects. The use of these tools opens the door to innovative uses of metrics in characterizing test plan quality and assessing overall testing risks. In support of these projects, the Software Assurance Technology Center (SATC) is working to develop and apply a metrics program that utilizes the information now available through the application of requirements management tools. Metrics based on this information provides real-time insight into the testing of requirements and these metrics assist the Project Quality Office in its testing oversight role. This paper discusses three facets of the SATC's efforts to evaluate the quality of the requirements and test plan early in the life cycle, thus preventing costly errors and time delays later.

Rosenberg, Linda↗