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At least 1,783 records · Page 99

Using CLIPS in a distributed system: The Network Control Center (NCC) expert system

This paper describes an intelligent troubleshooting system for the Help Desk domain. It was developed on an IBM-compatible 80286 PC using Microsoft C and CLIPS and an AT&T 3B2 minicomputer using the UNIFY database and a combination of shell script, C programs and SQL queries. The two computers are linked by a lan. The functions of this system are to help non-technical NCC personnel handle trouble calls, to keep a log of problem calls with complete, concise information, and to keep a historical database of problems. The database helps identify hardware and software problem areas and provides a source of new rules for the troubleshooting knowledge base.

Wannemacher, Tom↗

Land Use Planning

Computer technology, aerial photography and space imagery are being combined in a NASA community services program designed to help solve land use and natural resource planning problems. As urban areas grow, so grows the need for comprehensive, up-to-date information on which to base intelligent decisions regarding land use. State and local planners need information such as the nature of urban change, where the changes are occurring, how they affect public safety, transportation, the economy, tax assessment, sewer systems, water quality, flood hazard, noise impact and a great variety of other considerations. Most importantly they need continually updated maps. Preparing timely maps, gathering the essential data and maintaining it in orderly fashion are becoming matters of increasing difficulty. The NASA project, which has nationwide potential for improving efficiency in the planning process, is a pilot program focused on Tacoma, Washington and surrounding Pierce County. Its key element, developed by Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), is a computerized Land Use Management Information System (LUMIS).

Source record↗

TMS for Instantiating a Knowledge Base With Incomplete Data

A computer program that belongs to the class known among software experts as output truth-maintenance-systems (output TMSs) has been devised as one of a number of software tools for reducing the size of the knowledge base that must be searched during execution of artificial- intelligence software of the rule-based inference-engine type in a case in which data are missing. This program determines whether the consequences of activation of two or more rules can be combined without causing a logical inconsistency. For example, in a case involving hypothetical scenarios that could lead to turning a given device on or off, the program determines whether a scenario involving a given combination of rules could lead to turning the device both on and off at the same time, in which case that combination of rules would not be included in the scenario.

James, Mark↗

NASA Tech Briefs, June 2004

Topics covered include: COTS MEMS Flow-Measurement Probes; Measurement of an Evaporating Drop on a Reflective Substrate; Airplane Ice Detector Based on a Microwave Transmission Line; Microwave/Sonic Apparatus Measures Flow and Density in Pipe; Reducing Errors by Use of Redundancy in Gravity Measurements; Membrane-Based Water Evaporator for a Space Suit; Compact Microscope Imaging System with Intelligent Controls; Chirped-Superlattice, Blocked-Intersubband QWIP; Charge-Dissipative Electrical Cables; Deep-Sea Video Cameras Without Pressure Housings; RFID and Memory Devices Fabricated Integrally on Substrates; Analyzing Dynamics of Cooperating Spacecraft; Spacecraft Attitude Maneuver Planning Using Genetic Algorithms; Forensic Analysis of Compromised Computers; Document Concurrence System; Managing an Archive of Images; MPT Prediction of Aircraft-Engine Fan Noise; Improving Control of Two Motor Controllers; Electro-deionization Using Micro-separated Bipolar Membranes; Safer Electrolytes for Lithium-Ion Cells; Rotating Reverse-Osmosis for Water Purification; Making Precise Resonators for Mesoscale Vibratory Gyroscopes; Robotic End Effectors for Hard-Rock Climbing; Improved Nutation Damper for a Spin-Stabilized Spacecraft; Exhaust Nozzle for a Multitube Detonative Combustion Engine; Arc-Second Pointer for Balloon-Borne Astronomical Instrument; Compact, Automated Centrifugal Slide-Staining System; Two-Armed, Mobile, Sensate Research Robot; Compensating for Effects of Humidity on Electronic Noses; Brush/Fin Thermal Interfaces; Multispectral Scanner for Monitoring Plants; Coding for Communication Channels with Dead-Time Constraints; System for Better Spacing of Airplanes En Route; Algorithm for Training a Recurrent Multilayer Perceptron; Orbiter Interface Unit and Early Communication System; White-Light Nulling Interferometers for Detecting Planets; and Development of Methodology for Programming Autonomous Agents.

Source record↗

Accelerating catalytic advancements through the precision of high-throughput experiments & calculations

The growing demand for energy-efficient processes to support a sustainable future drives the need for research to rapidly explore chemical and material space through accelerated catalyst discovery initiatives. Recent breakthroughs in high-throughput experimental and computational methods are transforming the catalysis field, surpassing traditional approaches to manipulating variables in catalytic processes. Key advancements in innovation include the integration of machine learning for efficient catalyst screening, high-throughput experimentation, data-driven methodologies employing comprehensive databases, and in situ and in operando techniques for realistic observations. This progress has undoubtedly been intertwined with a collaborative framework across disciplines, reshaping catalyst discovery methods in both industry and academia. This Opinion article presents a multifaceted perspective from coauthors with expertise spanning various stages of the Technology Readiness Level spectrum, highlighting both opportunities and persistent challenges in integrating computational and experimental approaches in catalysis. These challenges span from obtaining high-quality experimental data, scaling simulations to industrially relevant materials and process conditions to navigating the complexity and predictive accuracy of computational models.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗

Apex Reference Manual 3.0 Beta

Apex is a toolkit for constructing software that behaves intelligently and responsively in demanding task environments. Reflecting its origin at NASA where Apex continues to be developed, current applications include: a) Providing autonomous mission management and tactical control capabilities for unmanned aerial vehicles including an autonomous surveillance helicopter and a simulation prototype of an unmanned fixed-wing aircraft to be used for wildfire mapping; b) Simulating human air traffic controllers, pilots and astronauts to help predict how people might respond to changes in equipment or procedures; and c) Predicting the precise duration and sequence of routine human behaviors based on a human-computer interaction engineering technique called CPM-GOMS. Among Apex s components are a set of implemented reasoning services, such as those for reactive planning and temporal pattern recognition; a software architecture that embeds and integrates these services and allows additional reasoning elements to be added as extensions; a formal language for specifying agent knowledge; a simulation environment to facilitate prototyping and analysis; and Sherpa, a set of tools for visualizing autonomy logic and runtime behavior. In combination, these are meant to provide a flexible and usable framework for creating, testing, and deploying intelligent agent software. Overall, our goal in developing Apex is to lower economic barriers to developing intelligent software agents. New ideas about how to extend or modify the system are evaluated in terms of their impact in reducing the time, expertise, and inventiveness required to build and maintain applications. For example, potential enhancements to the AI reasoning capabilities in the system are reviewed not only for usefulness and distinctiveness, but also for their impact on the readability and general usability of Apex s behavior representation language (PDL) and on the transparency of resulting behavior. A second central part of our approach is to iteratively refine Apex based on lessons learned from as diverse a set of applications as possible. Many applications have been developed by users outside the core development team including engineers, researchers, and students. Usability is thus a central concern for every aspect of Apex visible to a user, including PDL, Sherpa, the Apex installation process, APIs, and user documentation. Apex users vary in their areas of expertise and in their familiarity with autonomy technology. Focusing on usability, a development philosophy summarized by the project motto "Usable Autonomy," has been important part of enabling diverse users to employ Apex successfully and to provide feedback needed to guide iterative, user-centered refinement.

Freed, Michael A.↗

Managing autonomous materials labs with multi-agent AI and its implications for the science of science

Self-driving lab systems (aka, autonomous experimentation) accelerate research - letting scientists learn faster, spend less resources, and fail smarter in well defined, narrow studies. The next-generation materials lab combines self-driving systems to tackle broader challenges - orchestrating complex research campaigns while optimizing lab resources. We propose that agent-based and agentic artificial intelligence will be an integral part of next-generation lab management and discuss potential implementation scenarios. Additionally, digital and physical sandboxes will allow scientists to evaluate diverse and dynamic research and lab management strategies. Beyond the immediate benefit to lab optimization, such sandboxes will enable realistic computational studies of the philosophy of science (i.e., science of science) to achieve higher level scientific efficiencies.

Computer science↗

Overview of the NASA SETI Program

The NASA Search of Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) program plan is to scan the microwave window from 1 to 10 GHz with existing radio telescopes and sophisticated signal processing equipment looking for narrow band features that might represent artificial signals. A microwave spectrometer was built and is being field tested. A pattern recognition computer to search for drifting continuous wave signals and pulse trains in the output spectra is being designed. Equipment to characterize the radio frequency interference environment was also built. The plan is to complete the hardware and software by FY-88. Then, with increased funding, this equipment will be replicated in Very Large Scale Integration form. Observations, both a complete sky survey and a search fo nearby solar type stars, will begin in about 1990. The hypothesis that very powerful signals exist or that signals are being beamed at us will be tested. To detect the kinds of signals radiated at distances of 100 light years will require a collecting area kilometers in diameter.

Oliver, B. M.↗

Langley advanced real-time simulation (ARTS) system

A system of high-speed digital data networks was developed and installed to support real-time flight simulation at the NASA Langley Research Center. This system, unlike its predecessor, employs intelligence at each network node and uses distributed 10-V signal conversion equipment rather than centralized 100-V equipment. A network switch, which replaces an elaborate system of patch panels, allows the researcher to construct a customized network from the 25 available simulation sites by invoking a computer control statement. The intent of this paper is to provide a coherent functional description of the system. This development required many significant innovations to enhance performance and functionality such as the real-time clock, the network switch, and improvements to the CAMAC network to increase both distances to sites and data rates. The system has been successfully tested at a usable data rate of 24 M. The fiber optic lines allow distances of approximately 1.5 miles from switch to site. Unlike other local networks, CAMAC does not buffer data in blocks. Therefore, time delays in the network are kept below 10 microsec total. This system underwent months of testing and was put into full service in July 1987.

Crawford, Daniel J.↗

A parallel expert system for the control of a robotic air vehicle

Expert systems can be used to govern the intelligent control of vehicles, for example the Robotic Air Vehicle (RAV). Due to the nature of the RAV system the associated expert system needs to perform in a demanding real-time environment. The use of a parallel processing capability to support the associated expert system's computational requirement is critical in this application. Thus, algorithms for parallel real-time expert systems must be designed, analyzed, and synthesized. The design process incorporates a consideration of the rule-set/face-set size along with representation issues. These issues are looked at in reference to information movement and various inference mechanisms. Also examined is the process involved with transporting the RAV expert system functions from the TI Explorer, where they are implemented in the Automated Reasoning Tool (ART), to the iPSC Hypercube, where the system is synthesized using Concurrent Common LISP (CCLISP). The transformation process for the ART to CCLISP conversion is described. The performance characteristics of the parallel implementation of these expert systems on the iPSC Hypercube are compared to the TI Explorer implementation.

Shakley, Donald↗

Design knowledge capture for a corporate memory facility

Currently, much of the information regarding decision alternatives and trade-offs made in the course of a major program development effort is not represented or retained in a way that permits computer-based reasoning over the life cycle of the program. The loss of this information results in problems in tracing design alternatives to requirements, in assessing the impact of change in requirements, and in configuration management. To address these problems, the problem was studied of building an intelligent, active corporate memory facility which would provide for the capture of the requirements and standards of a program, analyze the design alternatives and trade-offs made over the program's lifetime, and examine relationships between requirements and design trade-offs. Early phases of the work have concentrated on design knowledge capture for the Space Station Freedom. Tools are demonstrated and extended which helps automate and document engineering trade studies, and another tool is being developed to help designers interactively explore design alternatives and constraints.

Boose, John H.↗

Constraint-based component-modeling for knowledge-based design

The paper describes the application of various advanced programming techniques derived from artificial intelligence research to the development of flexible design tools for conceptual design. Special attention is given to two techniques which appear to be readily applicable to such design tools: the constraint propagation technique and the object-oriented programming. The implementation of these techniques in a prototype computer tool, Rubber Airplane, is described.

Kolb, Mark A.↗

TMIS-design knowledge capture

The Boeing Advanced Technology Center is conducting research towards the goal of building a corporate memory facility that will provide techniques for capturing and using decision history and rationale throughout the lifecycle of a major NASA program. Currently, much of the information regarding decision alternatives and trade-offs made in the course of a major program development effort is not represented or retained in a way that permits computer-based reasoning over the lifecycle of the program. The loss of this information results in problems in tracing design alternatives to requirements, in assessing the impact of change in requirements, and in configuration management. To address these problems, we are studying the problem of building an intelligent active corporate memory facility which would provide for the capture of the requirements and standards of a program, analyze the design alternatives and trade-offs made over the program's lifetime, and examine relationships between requirements and design trade-offs.

Boose, John H.↗

Tiling as a Durable Abstraction for Parallelism and Data Locality

Tiling is a useful loop transformation for expressing parallelism and data locality. Automated tiling transformations that preserve data-locality are increasingly important due to hardware trends towards massive parallelism and the increasing costs of data movement relative to the cost of computing. We propose TiDA as a durable tiling abstraction that centralizes parameterized tiling information within array data types with minimal changes to the source code. The data layout information can be used by the compiler and runtime to automatically manage parallelism, optimize data locality, and schedule tasks intelligently. In this study, we present the design features and early interface of TiDA along with some preliminary results.

Unat, Didem↗

Developing Open-Source Training Materials for AI/ML and Space Biological Sciences Using NASA Cloud-Based Data

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) has gained significant traction in the biological and biomedical research fields, in part due to a culture of open data sharing and reuse. AI/ML methodology is well-suited to recognize and predict biological patterns from high-dimensional next-generation sequencing data (e.g. whole genome sequencing, transcriptomic sequencing), as well as from biological or medical imaging data (e.g. microscopy, computed tomography, ultrasound, magnetic resonance imaging, radiography). These methodologies hold particular promise for space biosciences research and automated space health monitoring systems. However, there are key considerations for properly training, validating, and testing a machine learning model in biological research or clinical application. Inexperienced researchers can produce models that perform poorly outside of the training dataset. Open Science principles such as data sharing and open-source code must go hand-in-hand with publicly available, high-quality training curricula in best practices, with modules centered on real-life scientific use cases and data so future AI/ML practitioners gain experience on real problems. Here we present the development of open-source training materials for AI/ML and space biosciences, as part of the NASA Transform to Open Science Training (TOPST) initiative. We develop 4 independent training programs, focused on the following topics: 1) Fundamentals of Machine Learning and Space Biosciences Domain, 2) Open Science, Artificial Intelligence, and Ethical Best Practices for Data Sharing and Analysis, 3) Using AI/ML Classification to Identify Gene Networks Affected By Space Exposure in Mouse Liver, and 4) Using Neural Networks to Find DNA Damage Patterns in Immune Cells after Radiation. All programs leverage cloud-based NASA biological datasets. The curriculum we present will enable worldwide access to training in AI/ML and scientific analysis.

James Casaletto↗

Diffusion Model-Guided Inverse Design of Bimetallic Catalysts for Ammonia Decomposition

In the past decade, artificial intelligence and deep learning have played increasingly prominent roles in materials design and discovery. Among these, generative AI models, known for their ability to create unique and complex structures, have emerged as state-of-the-art tools for materials screening due to their high efficiency and low computational cost. In catalysis, one of the major challenges is identifying promising material candidates within an immense chemical space. This challenge can be addressed using generative approaches, such as diffusion-based inverse design models. In this study, we present a machine learning-guided workflow that employed a diffusion model for the inverse design of bimetallic alloy catalysts for low-carbon ammonia decomposition, a key reaction for ammonia emission control and sustainable hydrogen production. Catalyst candidates were evaluated using nitrogen adsorption energy as the key descriptor, inspired by multiscale modeling. The proposed workflow identified low-cost, environmentally friendly catalysts with excellent catalytic performance, which have been validated theoretically and experimentally. Our framework decoupled the generative and property-prediction components, enhancing both flexibility and accuracy in the catalytic material design process.

Adsorption↗

ParaView Catalyst: Enabling In Situ Data Analysis and Visualization

Computer simulations are growing in sophistication and producing results of ever greater fidelity. This trend has been enabled by advances in numerical methods and increasing computing power. However these advances come with several costs including massive increases in data size, difficulties examining output data, challenges in configuring simulation runs, and difficulty debugging running codes. Interactive visualization tools, like ParaView, have been used for post-processing of simulation results. However, the increasing data sizes, and limited storage and bandwidth make high fidelity post-processing impractical. In situ analysis is recognized as one of the ways to address these challenges. In situ analysis moves some of the post-processing tasks in line with the simulation code thus short circuiting the need to communicate the data between the simulation and analysis via storage. ParaView Catalyst is a data processing and visualization library that enables in situ analysis and visualization. Built on and designed to interoperate with the standard visualization toolkit VTK and the ParaView application, Catalyst enables simulations to intelligently perform analysis, generate relevant output data, and visualize results concurrent with a running simulation. Here, we provide an overview of the Catalyst framework and some of the success stories.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗