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Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

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All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRS2018

Do You See What I See? Interactive Visualization of Mission Design and Navigation

Mission Design and Navigation (MDNav) is an intensive process requiring advanced computational resources, expert human intuition, and many successive human-in-the-loop iterations to converge on acceptable trajectory designs or navigation solutions. The current bottleneck in MDNav is not the underlying computational algorithms but the human cognitive capacity to prune through a multitude of simulated results to select high-value candidates. One approach to alleviate this burden is through the judicious application of visualizations that allow humans to interactively filter data in multiple dimensions to reveal salient patterns and highlight divergences. When designed efficiently, such interactive visualizations should aid human operators to get familiar with data faster, visually observe correlations, and communicate findings more effortlessly. In this work, we present three visualization case studies that have the potential to increase human operator efficiency in MDNav. While identifying the most critical “pain points” that operators face, and also working on potential solutions, we followed a human-centered design approach. We started with a series of interviews with potential users, and then rapidly created prototypes for alternative solutions, validated outcomes with feedback from users through out development of these proof of concept visualizations. With this survey of our current efforts, we demonstrate the transformative capability of interactive data visualizations for improving mission development and operations, enabling operators to grow intuition, and communicating key concepts across diverse mission teams.

Arora, Nitin↗
DOE OSTI2019

Dynamic color mapping with a multi-scale histogram: A design study with physical scientists

Many research and development activities for scientific data analysis have focused on scalability challenges and data-driven features. Conversely, data visualization that focus on models requiring human interaction rarely involve practical and largescale scientific data analysis. Therefore, a gap exists between interactive data visualization and scientific data analysis applications. In this paper, we present a design study of interactive data visualization to support scientists who visually analyze data from neutron scattering experiments. This study was conducted in multiple phases: 1) problem characterization; 2) initial design and formative evaluation; and 3) iterative design. We characterize the problems and the design requirements for the analysis of the specific physical science data. We discuss the design, development, evaluation of our visual analytics tool and as well as our iterative developments with physical scientists. We show how to bridge the gap between the two disciplines uncovering new potential to solve their challenges in this design study. We focus on a specific challenge, finding an optimal color mapping, which plays a critical role in neutron scattering science and is broadly applicable to other scientific domains. To address the challenge, we propose two interactive visualization techniques: a dynamic color scale bar (DCSB) and a multi-scale histogram (MSH).

Chae, Junghoon↗
DOE OSTI2016

Visual Analytics 101

This course will introduce the field of Visual Analytics to HCI researchers and practitioners highlighting the contributions they can make to this field. Topics will include a definition of visual analytics along with examples of current systems, types of tasks and end users, issues in defining user requirements, design of visualizations and interactions, guidelines and heuristics, the current state of user-centered evaluations, and metrics for evaluation. We encourage designers, HCI researchers, and HCI practitioners to attend to learn how their skills can contribute to advancing the state of the art of visual analytics

design of visualizations and interactions↗
DOE OSTI2020

Interactive Visualizations for Communicating Compliance and Sustainability Statements in Annual Site Environmental Reports - 20419

The annual reports of organizations are a recurring type of public disclosure that communicates what an organization has done and/or plans to do. Worldwide, organizations use annual reports as powerful instruments for communication that is rich in narrative content and visuals. From the perspective of the leadership of an organization, statutory annual reports are communication devices to stakeholders. By analogy, from the perspective of stakeholders, the annual reports are learning devices that presents stakeholders with contents to generate knowledge about an organization. We have chosen the online accessible U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Annual Site Environmental Reports (ASERs) as a collection of resources for communicating and learning the environmental management strategies on environmental compliance and environmental sustainability. Environmental Compliance 'consists of regulatory compliance and monitoring programs that implement federal, state, and local requirements, agreements, and permits.' Environmental Sustainability 'promotes and integrates initiatives such as energy and natural resource conservation, waste minimization, green remediation, and the use of sustainable products and services.' Interactive visualizations of textual data designed with visual analytics software can allow stakeholders to interact with statements on the environmental management strategies by performing diverse actions that promote learning. These actions include annotating, comparing, filtering, navigating, selecting and sharing relevant statements. We expect that the possibility of these multiple actions in an interactive manner help stakeholders to learn more effectively about the environmental strategies at U.S. DOE sites. The current case study for the project is a collection of 1,894 annotated (value-added) statements (sentence text) from the eight chapters of the 2017 Savanah River Site (SRS) annual site environmental report. The preliminary interactive visualizations are available online. (authors)

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2018

P4: Portable Parallel Processing Pipelines for Interactive Information Visualization

We present P4, an information visualization toolkit that combines declarative design specification and GPU computing for building high-performance interactive systems. Most of the existing information visualization toolkits do not harness the power of parallel processors in today's mainstream computers. P4 leverages GPU computing to accelerate both data processing and visualization rendering for interactive visualization applications. P4's programming interface offers a declarative visualization grammar for rapid specifications of data transformations, visual encodings, and interactions. By simplifying the development of GPU-accelerated visualization systems while supporting a high degree of flexibility and customization for design specification, P4 narrows the gap between expressiveness and scalability in information visualization toolkits. Through a range of examples and benchmark tests, we demonstrate that P4 provides high efficiency for creating interactive visualizations and offers drastic performance improvement over current state-of-the-art toolkits.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2023

Spatially Adaptive Tunable Lighting Control System with Expanded Wellness and Energy Saving Benefits

Lighting design is becoming increasingly complex, including active dimming for energy savings and spectral tuning for human wellbeing. Modern commercial lighting control systems are already difficult to use, and maintain, and even with so-called Smart Lighting, optimizing light settings is rapidly exceeding the capabilities of direct human control, limiting the adoption of lighting control systems. The growing importance of Occupancy Centric Controls (OCC) for advanced building management systems can be applied to the development of autonomous lighting system controls needed to drive the adoption of advanced lighting controls for improved adaptive “sculpted illumination” for both greater energy savings and broader human wellbeing perspectives. This project, led by Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, entitled “Spatially adaptive tunable lighting control system with expanded wellness and energy saving benefits” will develop and test an entirely new platform for automated optimized lighting design and control that requires little or no human engagement, yet contours lighting profiles automatically to minimize lighting energy use. We call this approach to lighting control “dynamic light sculpting” since the right amount of illumination is automatically delivered to occupants in real time. Since the system uses new, privacy-preserving occupant position and pose detection technologies developed by Rensselaer for broad OCC building applications, the control system will analyze how to deliver the right amount of the right type of illumination only where and when it is needed based these OCC platforms. To create these powerful autonomous lighting control platforms, the project will integrate evolving augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) tools with sophisticated lighting and interior design toolkits to create interactive lighting design and control simulators. Using the quickly growing paradigm of digital twins, these tools will integrate light fixture properties, occupancy sensor data, interior design data, and lighting specifications to accurately visualize how various design concepts interact with simulated yet realistic human activities that occur in commercial office buildings of various types. These advanced digital twin design and simulation tools will be combined with a new class of digitally-programmable LED lighting fixtures that can dynamically change the spectral content and direction of light emission. When fully integrated, the new autonomous lighting control system will take all of the guesswork out of optimizing light quality while minimizing energy consumption. Digital twin tools will simplify the design, installation, commissioning, operation, and maintenance of future energy-efficient lighting systems. It should be possible to reduce lighting energy costs from 40% to 70% with OCC based dynamic light sculpting systems. The work will be led by the Center for Lighting Enabled Systems and Applications (LESA) and the Center for Architectural Science and Ecology (CASE), both at Renssealer Polytechnic Institute; Lumileds, a global leader in the development of advanced LED systems; and HKS, a leading global architecture design firm. This interdisciplinary project team’s experience includes all of the design simulation tools, VR/AR digital twin visualization technology, advanced occupancy sensing technology, and complex control system design capabilities that will revolutionize lighting design and control technology to autonomously deliver high-quality lighting that improves human health and wellbeing while simultaneously maximizing lighting energy savings.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗
NASA NTRS1993

Design strategies and functionality of the Visual Interface for Virtual Interaction Development (VIVID) tool

Development of interactive virtual environments (VE) has typically consisted of three primary activities: model (object) development, model relationship tree development, and environment behavior definition and coding. The model and relationship tree development activities are accomplished with a variety of well-established graphic library (GL) based programs - most utilizing graphical user interfaces (GUI) with point-and-click interactions. Because of this GUI format, little programming expertise on the part of the developer is necessary to create the 3D graphical models or to establish interrelationships between the models. However, the third VE development activity, environment behavior definition and coding, has generally required the greatest amount of time and programmer expertise. Behaviors, characteristics, and interactions between objects and the user within a VE must be defined via command line C coding prior to rendering the environment scenes. In an effort to simplify this environment behavior definition phase for non-programmers, and to provide easy access to model and tree tools, a graphical interface and development tool has been created. The principal thrust of this research is to effect rapid development and prototyping of virtual environments. This presentation will discuss the 'Visual Interface for Virtual Interaction Development' (VIVID) tool; an X-Windows based system employing drop-down menus for user selection of program access, models, and trees, behavior editing, and code generation. Examples of these selection will be highlighted in this presentation, as will the currently available program interfaces. The functionality of this tool allows non-programming users access to all facets of VE development while providing experienced programmers with a collection of pre-coded behaviors. In conjunction with its existing, interfaces and predefined suite of behaviors, future development plans for VIVID will be described. These include incorporation of dual user virtual environment enhancements, tool expansion, and additional behaviors.

Nguyen, Lac↗
DOE OSTI2018

Remote Off-grid Microgrid Design Support Tool (ROMDST) - An Optimal Design Support Tool for Remote, Resilient, and Reliable Microgrids Phase II - Final Report

The objective of the project is to develop an advanced optimization-based design support tool for AC or DC microgrids in remote locations, where utility grids may not be accessible. The mathematical model and the interface are being developed such that multiple design objectives and criteria/constraints can be easily enabled or disabled, to deliver a flexible tool relevant to a large, diverse user base, and to facilitate future feature developments. The new tool delivered by this project leverages the team’s extensive expertise in the development, testing, deployment, and commercialization of the state-of-the-art Distributed Energy Resources Customer Adoption Model (DER-CAM) – which is the foundation for the new tool. Phase I of the project leverages the microgrid design and decision support tool DER-CAM. Key Phase I developments include the following adaption to the DER-CAM model: a) AC or DC microgrid architectures, b) multiple economic objectives (e.g. single customer vs community vs utility perspective), c) constraints on fuel availability (e.g. total fuel available during outage periods), d) active and reactive power flow constraints for normal and N-1 contingency cases, e) component part load efficiencies (e.g. power electronic devices), and f) interactive data visualization capabilities (e.g. design topology elements). A component library including components’ default technical and economical characteristics was also developed. In Phase II, the project is focused on tool testing and validation, use for real-world microgrid designs, and outreach. Fully developing this tool will have the following impacts: 1) optimal off-grid microgrid designs that replace existing back of the envelope or non-optimal calculations, reducing capital costs and risk of microgrid deployment; 2) removing barriers to microgrid assessments by lowering microgrid soft costs, as the tool is freely usable; 3) reliable and resilient designs that reduce the cost of critical load shedding due to component outages.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗
DOE OSTI2019

Remote Off-grid Microgrid Design Support Tool (ROMDST) - An Optimal Design Support Tool for Remote, Resilient, and Reliable Microgrids (Phase II, Final Report)

The objective of the project is to develop an advanced optimization-based design support tool for AC or DC microgrids in remote locations, where utility grids may not be accessible. The mathematical model and the interface are being developed such that multiple design objectives and criteria/constraints can be easily enabled or disabled, to deliver a flexible tool relevant to a large, diverse user base, and to facilitate future feature developments. The new tool delivered by this project leverages the team’s extensive expertise in the development, testing, deployment, and commercialization of the state-of-the-art Distributed Energy Resources Customer Adoption Model (DER-CAM) – which is the foundation for the new tool. Phase I of the project leverages the microgrid design and decision support tool DER-CAM. Key Phase I developments include the following adaption to the DER-CAM model: a) AC or DC microgrid architectures, b) multiple economic objectives (e.g. single customer vs community vs utility perspective), c) constraints on fuel availability (e.g. total fuel available during outage periods), d) active and reactive power flow constraints for normal and N-1 contingency cases, e) component part load efficiencies (e.g. power electronic devices), and f) interactive data visualization capabilities (e.g. design topology elements). A component library including components’ default technical and economical characteristics was also developed. In Phase II, the project is focused on tool testing and validation, use for real-world microgrid designs, and outreach. Fully developing this tool will have the following impacts: 1) optimal off-grid microgrid designs that replace existing back of the envelope or non-optimal calculations, reducing capital costs and risk of microgrid deployment; 2) removing barriers to microgrid assessments by lowering microgrid soft costs, as the tool is freely usable; 3) reliable and resilient designs that reduce the cost of critical load shedding due to component outages.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗
NASA NTRS1999

Re-Design and Beat Testing of the Man-Machine Integration Design and Analysis System: MIDAS

The Man-machine Design and Analysis System (MIDAS) is a human factors design and analysis system that combines human cognitive models with 3D CAD models and rapid prototyping and simulation techniques. MIDAS allows designers to ask 'what if' types of questions early in concept exploration and development prior to actual hardware development. The system outputs predictions of operator workload, situational awareness and system performance as well as graphical visualization of the cockpit designs interacting with models of the human in a mission scenario. Recently, MIDAS was re-designed to enhance functionality and usability. The goals driving the redesign include more efficient processing, GUI interface, advances in the memory structures, implementation of external vision models and audition. These changes were detailed in an earlier paper. Two Beta test sites with diverse applications have been chosen. One Beta test site is investigating the development of a new airframe and its interaction with the air traffic management system. The second Beta test effort will investigate 3D auditory cueing in conjunction with traditional visual cueing strategies including panel-mounted and heads-up displays. The progress and lessons learned on each of these projects will be discussed.

Shively, R. Jay↗
NASA NTRS2005

Managed Development Environment Successes for MSFC's VIPA Team

This paper outlines the best practices of the Vehicle Design Team for VIPA. VIPA is the Vehicle Integrated Performance Analysis Team at MSFC. This team was created to reconnect the individual engineering disciplines to be able to perform system level technical assessments in support of program decisions. The functions of the VIPA Vehicle Design (VVD) discipline team are to maintain the controlled reference geometry and provide linked, simplified geometry for each of the other discipline analyses. The core of the VVD work, and the approach for VVD s first task of controlling the reference geometry, involves systems engineering, top-down, layout-based CAD modeling within a Product Data Manager (PDM) development environment. The topdown approach allcws for simple contrnl of very large, integrated assemblies and greatly enhances the ability to generate trade configurations and reuse data. The second W D task, model simplification for analysis, is handled within the managed environment through application of the master model concept. In this approach, there is a single controlling, or master, product definition dataset. Connected to this master model are reference datasets with live geometric and expression links. The referenced models can be for drawings, manufacturing, visualization, embedded analysis, or analysis simplification. A discussion of web based interaction, including visualization, between the design and other disciplines is included. Demonstrated examples are cited, including the Space Launch Initiative development cycle, the Saturn V systems integration and verification cycle, an Orbital Space Plane study, and NASA Exploration Office studies of Shuttle derived and clean sheet launch vehicles. The VIPA Team has brought an immense amount of detailed data to bear on program issues. A central piece of that success has been the Managed Development Environment and the VVD Team approach to modeling.

Finckenor, Jeff↗
NASA NTRS2005

Managed Development Environment Successes for MSFC's VIPA Team

This paper outlines the best practices of the Vehicle Design Team for VIPA. The functions of the VIPA Vehicle Design (VVD) discipline team are to maintain the controlled reference geometry and provide linked, simplified geometry for each of the other discipline analyses. The core of the VVD work, and the approach for VVD s first task of controlling the reference geometry, involves systems engineering, top-down, layout-based CAD modeling within a Product Data Manager (PDM) development environment. The top- down approach allows for simple control of very large, integrated assemblies and greatly enhances the ability to generate trade configurations and reuse data. The second VVD task, model simplification for analysis, is handled within the managed environment through application of the master model concept. In this approach, there is a single controlling, or master, product definition dataset. Connected to this master model are reference datasets with live geometric and expression links. The referenced models can be for drawings, manufacturing, visualization, embedded analysis, or analysis simplification. A discussion of web based interaction, including visualization, between the design and other disciplines is included. Demonstrated examples are cited, including the Space Launch Initiative development cycle, the Saturn V systems integration and verification cycle, an Orbital Space Plane study, and NASA Exploration Office studies of Shuttle derived and clean sheet launch vehicles. The VIPA Team has brought an immense amount of detailed data to bear on program issues. A central piece of that success has been the Managed Development Environment and the VVD Team approach to modeling.

Finckenor, Jeff↗
DOE OSTI2025

PDnetwork

PDnetwork is an interactive online tool designed to visualize the evolution of the co-authorship network in the field of peridynamics. In this network, each node represents a peridynamics author, and each link represents co-authorship between authors. The tool allows users to obtain collaborative measures for authors using selected network metrics and visualize collaborations for specific authors. Additionally, it provides rankings for authors based on selected collaboration metrics and includes links to the author profiles in the Scopus publication database.

Dahal, Biraj [Georgia Institute of Technology, Atl↗