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At least 1,333 records · Page 74

Interface Anywhere: Development of a Voice and Gesture System for Spaceflight Operations

The Interface Anywhere Project was funded through Innovation Charge Account (ICA) at NASA JSC in the Fall of 2012. The project was collaboration between human factors and engineering to explore the possibility of designing an interface to control basic habitat operations through gesture and voice control; (a) Current interfaces require the users to be physically near an input device in order to interact with the system; and (b) By using voice and gesture commands, the user is able to interact with the system anywhere they want within the work environment.

Thompson, Shelby↗

NASA Docking System (NDS) Interface Definitions Document (IDD)

The contents of this document define the integrated performance and interface design for NASA Docking System (NDS) Block 1 and the International Docking Adapter. The intent of this IDD is to provide the interface design for using, installing, and interfacing to the NDS Block 1 that will enable successful docking to the IDA. This document is under the control of the ISS Development Projects Office (OG).

Tabakman, Alexander↗

Determination of Liquid/Gas Interface and Liquid Center of Gravity for GPM Tank with PMD Using Surface Evolver

Many spacecraft, such as the Global Precipitation Mission (GPM) spacecraft, use propellant management devices (PMDs) to control liquid propellant within propellant tanks. Surface Evolver, an energy minimization routine, is used to find liquid-gas interface shapes due to surface tension and propellant center of mass locations for varying initial liquid positions, contact angles, and fill fractions for the GPM tank with a PMD. This study shows that Surface Evolver can accurately model the liquid-gas interface and liquid center of mass location for a complicated tank and PMD. The Surface Evolver results show that the initial position of the propellant, the contact angle between the propellant and solid surfaces, and the fill fraction of the propellant can drastically affect the liquid-gas interface in the tank and thus the center of mass of the propellant.

Benson, David J.↗

Performance Evaluation of Speech Recognition Systems as a Next-Generation Pilot-Vehicle Interface Technology

During the flight trials known as Gulfstream-V Synthetic Vision Systems Integrated Technology Evaluation (GV-SITE), a Speech Recognition System (SRS) was used by the evaluation pilots. The SRS system was intended to be an intuitive interface for display control (rather than knobs, buttons, etc.). This paper describes the performance of the current "state of the art" Speech Recognition System (SRS). The commercially available technology was evaluated as an application for possible inclusion in commercial aircraft flight decks as a crew-to-vehicle interface. Specifically, the technology is to be used as an interface from aircrew to the onboard displays, controls, and flight management tasks. A flight test of a SRS as well as a laboratory test was conducted.

Arthur, Jarvis J., III↗

Evaluation of the Next-Gen Exercise Software Interface in the NEEMO Analog

NSBRI (National Space Biomedical Research Institute) funded research grant to develop the 'NextGen' exercise software for the NEEMO (NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations) analog. Develop a software architecture to integrate instructional, motivational and socialization techniques into a common portal to enhance exercise countermeasures in remote environments. Increase user efficiency and satisfaction, and institute commonality across multiple exercise systems. Utilized GUI (Graphical User Interface) design principals focused on intuitive ease of use to minimize training time and realize early user efficiency. Project requirement to test the software in an analog environment. Top Level Project Aims: 1) Improve the usability of crew interface software to exercise CMS (Crew Management System) through common app-like interfaces. 2) Introduce virtual instructional motion training. 3) Use virtual environment to provide remote socialization with family and friends, improve exercise technique, adherence, motivation and ultimately performance outcomes.

Hanson, Andrea↗

Thermal Protection Supplement for Reducing Interface Thermal Mismatch

A thermal protection system that reduces a mismatch of thermal expansion coefficients CTE between a first material layer (CTE1) and a second material layer (CTE2) at a first layer-second layer interface. A portion of aluminum borosilicate (abs) or another suitable additive (add), whose CTE value, CTE(add), satisfies (CTE(add)-CTE1)(CTE(add)-CTE2)<0, is distributed with variable additive density,.rho.(z;add), in the first material layer and/or in the second material layer, with.rho.(z;add) near the materials interface being relatively high (alternatively, relatively low) and.rho.(z;add) in a region spaced apart from the interface being relatively low (alternatively, relatively high).

Stewart, David A.↗

Natural Language Based Multimodal Interface for UAV Mission Planning

As the number of viable applications for unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) systems increases at an exponential rate, interfaces that reduce the reliance on highly skilled engineers and pilots must be developed. Recent work aims to make use of common human communication modalities such as speech and gesture. This paper explores a multimodal natural language interface that uses a combination of speech and gesture input modalities to build complex UAV flight paths by defining trajectory segment primitives. Gesture inputs are used to define the general shape of a segment while speech inputs provide additional geometric information needed to fully characterize a trajectory segment. A user study is conducted in order to evaluate the efficacy of the multimodal interface.

Chandarana, Meghan↗

Future ATM Concepts Evaluation Tool (FACET) Interface Control Document

This Interface Control Document (ICD) documents the airspace adaptation and air traffic inputs of NASA's Future ATM Concepts and Evaluation Tool (FACET). Its intended audience is the project manager, project team, development team, and stakeholders interested in interfacing with the system. FACET equips Air Traffic Management (ATM) researchers and service providers with a way to explore, develop and evaluate advanced air transportation concepts before they are field-tested and eventually deployed. FACET is a flexible software tool that is capable of quickly generating and analyzing thousands of aircraft trajectories. It provides researchers with a simulation environment for preliminary testing of advanced ATM concepts. Using aircraft performance profiles, airspace models, weather data, and flight schedules, the tool models trajectories for the climb, cruise, and descent phases of flight for each type of aircraft. An advanced graphical interface displays traffic patterns in two and three dimensions, under various current and projected conditions for specific airspace regions or over the entire continental United States. The system is able to simulate a full day's dynamic national airspace system (NAS) operations, model system uncertainty, measure the impact of different decision-makers in the NAS, and provide analysis of the results in graphical form, including sector, airport, fix, and airway usage statistics. NASA researchers test and analyze the system-wide impact of new traffic flow management algorithms under anticipated air traffic growth projections on the nation's air traffic system. In addition to modeling the airspace system for NASA research, FACET has also successfully transitioned into a valuable tool for operational use. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) traffic flow managers and commercial airline dispatchers have used FACET technology for real-time operations planning. FACET integrates live air traffic data from FAA radar systems and weather data from the National Weather Service to summarize NAS performance. This information allows system operators to reroute flights around congested airspace and severe weather to maintain safety and minimize delay. FACET also supports the planning and post-operational evaluation of reroute strategies at the national level to maximize system efficiency. For the commercial airline passenger, strategic planning with FACET can result in fewer flight delays and cancellations. The performance capabilities of FACET are largely due to its architecture, which strikes a balance between flexibility and fidelity. FACET is capable of modeling the airspace operations for the continental United States, processing thousands of aircraft on a single computer. FACET was written in Java and C, enabling the portability of its software to a variety of operating systems. In addition, FACET was designed with a modular software architecture to facilitate rapid prototyping of diverse ATM concepts. Several advanced ATM concepts have already been implemented in FACET, including aircraft self-separation, prediction of aircraft demand and sector congestion, system-wide impact assessment of traffic flow management constraints, and wind-optimal routing.

FACET↗

A Pilot Study to Determine MBSE Utility for Process Modeling of Complex Interfaces

Modeling a full system or a complete interface between systems in a MBSE environment is a very large task and not all organizations will benefit enough from using MBSE to offset the effort that is required to do this. Completely modeling a system or interface is not necessary to evaluate the utility of MBSE for a specific application or organization. A small pilot can be executed over a short period of time that only models small portions of a system or interface and, if structured properly, this pilot can successfully demonstrate the utility of MBSE for an organization before having to invest a larger amount of resources to fully implement and deploy MBSE. This paper documents one such pilot that was conducted for NASA’s Launch Services Program.

MBSE↗

A Pilot Study to Determine MBSE Utility for Process Modeling of Complex Interfaces

Modeling a full system or a complete interface between systems in a MBSE environment is a very large task and not all organizations will benefit enough from using MBSE to offset the effort that is required to do this. Completely modeling a system or interface is not necessary to evaluate the utility of MBSE for a specific application or organization. A small pilot can be executed over a short period of time that only models small portions of a system or interface and, if structured properly, this pilot can successfully demonstrate the utility of MBSE for an organization before having to invest a larger amount of resources to fully implement and deploy MBSE. This paper documents one such pilot that was conducted for NASA's Launch Services Program.

MBSE↗

A Pilot Study to Determine MBSE Utility for Process Modeling of Complex Interfaces

Modeling a full system or a complete interface between systems in a MBSE environment is a very large task and not all organizations will benefit enough from using MBSE to offset the effort that is required to do this. Completely modeling a system or interface is not necessary to evaluate the utility of MBSE for a specific application or organization. A small pilot can be executed over a short period of time that only models small portions of a system or interface and, if structured properly, this pilot can successfully demonstrate the utility of MBSE for an organization before having to invest a larger amount of resources to fully implement and deploy MBSE. This paper documents one such pilot that was conducted for NASA's Launch Services Program.

MBSE↗

System and Method for Providing a Climate Data Analytic Services Application Programming Interface

A system, method and computer-readable storage devices for providing a climate data analytic services application programming interface. The system includes a programming library that enables client device software to invoke the capabilities of a climate data analytics system through requests to various services supported by the climate data analytics system, and also includes a client-side communications interface that enables the programming library's methods to interact with a climate data analytics system's server interface to obtain access to the capabilities of the system. In one implementation, the programming library is implemented in the Python programming language. The programming library can include basic utilities that call a single, server-side method implemented by one of the various services supported by the climate data analytics system, and extended utilities that call a series of basic utilities and/or other extended utilities that have been placed under programmatic control in order to create client-side convenience methods and workflows.

Schnase, John L.↗

Method and Apparatus for Providing In-Flight Pilot Interface for Trajectory Optimization

Systems and methods of an in-cockpit flight trajectory modification system for an aircraft are provided. A receiver is capable of receiving flight-related hazard information. A traffic aware planner (TAP) module is operably connected to the receiver to receive the flight-related hazard information. A user interface device is operably connected to the TAP module on board the aircraft to provide trajectory information associated with the aircraft and to receive user input corresponding to a request for a revised trajectory. A TAP application is capable of calculating one or more revised trajectories for the aircraft based at least on active trajectory information of the aircraft and the flight-related hazard information. The user interface device may be configured to display information related to the one or more revised trajectories, including a graphic display of the active trajectory and at least one revised trajectory in a visualization panel of the user interface device.

Burke, Kelly Ann↗

Modeling Systems-Of-Systems Interfaces with SysML

Space data systems are inherently complex. They are systems-of-systems, typically composed of spacecraft and mission operations systems (MOS) belonging to one (or more) organizations, and multi-mission communication assets belonging to other organizations. In many cases, the spacecraft contain sub-systems and instruments provided by different organizations, and MOS systems that may be developed and operated by other organizations. The point of greatest leverage in system architecting is at the interfaces. We have developed a set of methods for using SysML to model systems-of-systems and their interfaces. This paper describes how to apply this method to space data systems at a variety of levels of detail, from abstract systems and subsystems down to hardware and software components, including the details of their interfaces and protocol designs.

Shames, Peter M.↗

Best Practices for Evaluating Flight Deck Interfaces for Transport Category Aircraft with Particular Relevance to Issues of Attention, Awareness, and Understanding CAST SE-210 Output 2 Report 6 of 6

Attention, awareness, and understanding of the flight crew are a critical contributor to safety and the flight deck plays a critical role in supporting these cognitive functions. Changes to the flight deck need to be evaluated for whether the changed device provides adequate support for these functions. This report describes a set of diverse evaluation methods. The report recommends designing the interface-evaluation to span the phases of the device development, from early to late, and it provides methods appropriate at each phase. It describes the various ways in which an interface or interface component can fail to support awareness as potential issues to be assessed in evaluation. It summarizes appropriate methods to evaluate different issues concerning inadequate support for these functions, throughout the phases of development.

Billman, Dorrit O.↗

Towards Informing an Intuitive Mission Planning Interface for Autonomous Multi-Asset Teams via Image Descriptions

Establishing a basis for certification of autonomous systems using trust and trustworthiness is the focus of Autonomy Teaming and TRAjectories for Complex Trusted Operational Reliability (ATTRACTOR). The Human-Machine Interface (HMI) team is working to capture and utilize the multitude of ways in which humans are already comfortable communicating mission goals and translate that into an intuitive mission planning interface. Several input/output modalities (speech/audio, typing/text, touch, and gesture) are being considered and investigated in the context human-machine teaming for the ATTRACTOR design reference mission (DRM) of Search and Rescue or (more generally) intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR). The first of these investigations, the Human Informed Natural-language GANs Evaluation (HINGE) data collection effort, is aimed at building an image description database to train a Generative Adversarial Network (GAN). In addition to building an image description database, the HMI team was interested if, and how, modality (spoken vs. written) affects different aspects of the image description given. The results will be analyzed to better inform the designing of an interface for mission planning.

Generative Adversarial Network (GAN)↗

Ultrafast Melting at Metal-Semiconductor Interfaces: A Molecular Dynamics Study

Quantifying the thermodynamics of interfacial melting is important for several applications such as laser machining and designing radiation hardened electronic devices. Due to the short time and length scales that are involved in the process, molecular simulations provide an ideal path for understating the interfacial melting phenomena. In this work we investigate tungsten (W) – silicon carbide (SiC) interfaces which are relevant in modern high-power electronic devices. Classical molecular dynamics simulations along with the two-temperature model (TTM) were used to study the radiation induced melting of the interface while a neural network-based machine learning framework was used to track the transient re-crystallization process. The damage endured by the semiconductor at the interface following the radiation event is discussed in detail while the re-crystallization of the metal is described in terms of the classical nucleation theory.

Ashwin Ravichandran↗

Extending the Capabilities of Thermal Desktop with the OpenTD Application Programming Interface

With the release of Thermal Desktop 6.0, users now had the ability to interface with some of the many elements and constructs of a Thermal Desktop model through external applications developed using the TD API (Application Programming Interface). This file allows applications to be developed in the .NET framework and interface to a number of object types within a Thermal Desktop model. The release of 6.1 expands the subset of objects able to be manipulated and now includes the raw geometrical information of surfaces. With the release of 6.1, the API was now referred to as OpenTD. This paper discusses some of the utilities and capabilities developed using the OpenTD API at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. These include utilities to help with configuration control of models and case sets, addition of logic to better process heater performance, and a methodology implemented to allow for submodel level processing of radiation couplings to include smaller radks where needed in a cryogenic region without using the same criteria for the warmer portions of the model. This last utility is targeting a reduction in run time without sacrificing accuracy. Lastly, some lessons learned, work-arounds, and wishes for the next release of the OpenTD API are also presented.

Thermal Desktop↗