Results for “task work” — Page 23

NASA NTRS2006

Real-Time EDL Navigation Performance Using Spacecraft to Spacecraft Radiometric Data

A two-year task sponsored by NASA's Mars Technology Program's Advanced Entry, Descent and Landing (EDL) work area includes investigation of improvements to EDL navigation by processing spacecraft-to-spacecraft radiometric data. Spacecraft-to- spacecraft navigation will take advantage of the UHF link between two spacecraft (i.e. to an orbiter from an approaching lander for EDL telemetry relay) to build radiometric data, specifically the velocity between the two spacecraft along the radio beam, that are processed to determine position and velocity in real time. The improved onboard state knowledge provided by spacecraft-to-spacecraft navigation will improve the performance of entry guidance by providing a more accurate state estimate and ultimately reduce the landed position error. Work on the final year of this task is reported here.

descent↗

NASA NTRS2002

A Proposal to Investigate Outstanding Problems in Astronomy

During the period leading up to the spectacular launch of the Space Shuttle Columbia (STS-109) on 1 March 2002 6:22 am EST, the team worked hard on a myriad of tasks to be ready for launch. Our launch support included preparations and rehearsals for the support during the mission, preparation for the SMOV and ERO program, and work to have the science team's data pipeline (APSIS) and data archive (SDA) ready by launch. A core of the team that was at the GSFC during the EVA that installed ACS monitored the turn-on and aliveness tests of ACS. One hour after installation of ACS in the HST George Hartig was showing those of us at Goddard the telemetry which demonstrated that the HRC and WFC CCDs were cooling to their preset temperatures. The TECs had survived launch! After launch, the team had several immediate and demanding tasks. We had to process the ERO observations through our pipeline and understand the limitations of the ground based-based calibrations, and simultaneously prepare the EROs for public release. The ERO images and the SMOV calibrations demonstrated that ACS met or exceeded its specifications for image quality and sensitivity. It is the most sensitive instrument that Hubble has had. The ERO images themselves made the front page of all of the major newspapers in the US. During the months after launch we have worked on the SMOV observations, and are analyzing the data from our science program.

Ford, Holland↗

NASA NTRS2016

Advanced EVA Suit Camera System Development Project

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) at the Johnson Space Center (JSC) is developing a new extra-vehicular activity (EVA) suit known as the Advanced EVA Z2 Suit. All of the improvements to the EVA Suit provide the opportunity to update the technology of the video imagery. My summer internship project involved improving the video streaming capabilities of the cameras that will be used on the Z2 Suit for data acquisition. To accomplish this, I familiarized myself with the architecture of the camera that is currently being tested to be able to make improvements on the design. Because there is a lot of benefit to saving space, power, and weight on the EVA suit, my job was to use Altium Design to start designing a much smaller and simplified interface board for the camera's microprocessor and external components. This involved checking datasheets of various components and checking signal connections to ensure that this architecture could be used for both the Z2 suit and potentially other future projects. The Orion spacecraft is a specific project that may benefit from this condensed camera interface design. The camera's physical placement on the suit also needed to be determined and tested so that image resolution can be maximized. Many of the options of the camera placement may be tested along with other future suit testing. There are multiple teams that work on different parts of the suit, so the camera's placement could directly affect their research or design. For this reason, a big part of my project was initiating contact with other branches and setting up multiple meetings to learn more about the pros and cons of the potential camera placements we are analyzing. Collaboration with the multiple teams working on the Advanced EVA Z2 Suit is absolutely necessary and these comparisons will be used as further progress is made for the overall suit design. This prototype will not be finished in time for the scheduled Z2 Suit testing, so my time was also spent creating a case for the original interface board that is already being used. This design is being done by use of Creo 2. Due to time constraints, I may not be able to complete the 3-D printing portion of this design, but I was able to use my knowledge of the interface board and Altium Design to help in the task. As a side project, I assisted another intern in selecting and programming a microprocessor to control linear actuators. These linear actuators will be used to move various increments of polyethylene for controlled radiation testing. For this, we began the software portion of the project using the Arduino's coding environment to control an Arduino Due and H-Bridge components. Along with the obvious learning of computer programs such as Altium Design and Creo 2, I also acquired more skills with networking and collaborating with others, being able to multi-task because of responsibilities to work on various projects, and how to set realistic goals in the work place. Like many internship projects, this project will be continued and improved, so I also had the chance to improve my organization and communication skills as I documented all of my meetings and research. As a result of my internship at JSC, I desire to continue a career with NASA, whether that be through another internship or possibly a co-op. I am excited to return to my university and continue my education in electrical engineering because of all of my experiences at JSC.

Mock, Kyla↗

DOE OSTI2026

Center for Bio-Inspired Energy Science (CBES) (Final Report)

The goal of the EFRC on Bio-Inspired Energy Science (CBES) has been to create and understand materials and systems inspired by biology, seeking to innovate on energy utilization and its environmental implications. In the most recent two-year funding cycle (2022–2024), we extended strategic projects from each of the five tasks from the previous cycle. This work offers important advances in how soft matter can be used to convert and store energy. We briefly summarize selected key accomplishments from each task below.

10 SYNTHETIC FUELS↗

NASA NTRS2009

Security Analysis of DTN Architecture and Bundle Protocol Specification for Space-Based Networks

A Delay-Tolerant Network (DTN) Architecture (Request for Comment, RFC-4838) and Bundle Protocol Specification, RFC-5050, have been proposed for space and terrestrial networks. Additional security specifications have been provided via the Bundle Security Specification (currently a work in progress as an Internet Research Task Force internet-draft) and, for link-layer protocols applicable to Space networks, the Licklider Transport Protocol Security Extensions. This document provides a security analysis of the current DTN RFCs and proposed security related internet drafts with a focus on space-based communication networks, which is a rather restricted subset of DTN networks. Note, the original focus and motivation of DTN work was for the Interplanetary Internet . This document does not address general store-and-forward network overlays, just the current work being done by the Internet Research Task Force (IRTF) and the Consultative Committee for Space Data Systems (CCSDS) Space Internetworking Services Area (SIS) - DTN working group under the DTN and Bundle umbrellas. However, much of the analysis is relevant to general store-and-forward overlays.

Ivancic, William D.↗

NASA NTRS1983

The application of remote sensing to resource management and environmental quality programs in Kansas

The activities of the Kansas Applied Remote Sensing (KARS) Program during the period April 1, 1982 through Marsh 31, 1983 are described. The most important work revolved around the Kansas Interagency Task Force on Applied Remote Sensing and its efforts to establish an operational service oriented remote sensing program in Kansas state government. Concomitant with this work was the upgrading of KARS capabilities to process data for state agencies through the vehicle of a low cost digital data processing system. The KARS Program continued to take an active role in irrigation mapping. KARS is now integrating data acquired through analysis of LANDSAT into geographic information systems designed for evaluating groundwater resources. KARS also continues to work at the national level on the national inventory of state natural resources information systems.

Barr, B. G.↗

DOE OSTI2025

A Typology of Decision-Making Tasks for Visualization

Despite decision-making being a vital goal of data visualization, little work has been done to differentiate decision-making tasks within the field. While visualization task taxonomies and typologies exist, they often focus on more granular analytical tasks that are too low-level to describe large complex decisions, which can make it difficult to reason about and design decision-support tools. In this paper, we contribute a typology of decision-making tasks that were iteratively refined from a list of design goals distilled from a literature review. Our typology is concise and consists of only three tasks: CHOOSE, ACTIVATE, and CREATE. Although decision types originating in other disciplines exist, we provide definitions for these tasks that are suitable for the visualization community. Our proposed typology offers two benefits. First, the ability to compose and hierarchically organize the tasks enables flexible and clear descriptions of decisions with varying levels of complexities. Second, the typology encourages productive discourse between visualization designers and domain experts by abstracting the intricacies of data, thereby promoting clarity and rigorous analysis of decision-making processes. We demonstrate the benefits of our typology through four case studies, and present an evaluation of the typology from semi-structured interviews with experienced members of the visualization community who have contributed to developing or publishing decision support systems for domain experts. Our interviewees used our typology to delineate the decision-making processes supported by their systems, demonstrating its descriptive capacity and effectiveness. Finally, we present preliminary findings on the usefulness of our typology for visualization design.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

NASA NTRS2019

ACO: Liquid Oxygen/Methane Lander Propulsion (LOX-CH4 Prop) Task

High-level overview of JSC work during Blue Moon ACO.

ACO↗

NASA NTRS1987

Cable applications in robot compliant devices

Robotic systems need compliance to connect the robot to the work object. The cable system illustrated offers compliance for mating but can be changed in space to become quite stiff. Thus the same system can do both tasks, even in environments where the work object or robot are moving at different frequencies and different amplitudes. The adjustment can be made in all six degrees of freedom, translated in or rotated in any plane and still make a good contact and control.

Kerley, James J.↗

NASA NTRS2000

Intelligent Tutoring Systems for Procedural Task Training of Remote Payload Operations at NASA

Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITSs) encode and apply the subject matter and teaching expertise of experienced instructors to provide students with individualized instruction automatically. ITSs complement training simulators by providing automated instruction when it is not economical or feasible to dedicate an instructor to each student during training simulations. Despite their proven training effectiveness and favorable operating cost, however, relatively few ITSs are in use. This is largely because it is usually costly and difficult to encode the task knowledge used by the ITS to evaluate the student's actions and assess the student's performance. Procedural tasks are tasks for which there exist procedures, guidelines, and strategies that determine the correct set of steps to be taken within each situation. To lower the cost and difficulty of creating tutoring systems for procedural task training, Stottler Henke Associates, Inc. (SHAI) worked closely with the Operations Training Group at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center to develop the Task Tutor Toolkit (T (exp 3)), a generic tutoring system shell and scenario authoring tool. The Task Tutor Toolkit employs a case-based reasoning approach where the instructor creates a procedure template that specifies the range of student actions that are "correct" within each scenario. Because each procedure template is specific to a single scenario, the system can employ relatively simple reasoning methods to represent a correct set of actions and assess student performance. This simplicity enables a non-programmer to specify task knowledge quickly and easily by via graphical user interface, using a "demonstrate, generalize, and annotate" paradigm, that recognizes the range of possible valid actions and infers principles understood (or misunderstood) by the student when those actions are carried out. The Task Tutor Toolkit was also designed to be modular and general, so that it can be interfaced with a wide range of training simulators and support a variety of training domains. SHAI and NASA applied the Task Tutor Toolkit to create the Remote Payload Operations Tutor (RPOT). RPOT is a specific tutoring system application which lets scientists who are new to space mission operations learn to monitor and control their experiments aboard the International Space Station according to NASA payload regulations, guidelines, and procedures. The RPOT simulator lets students practice these skills by monitoring the telemetry variable values of a simple, hypothetical experiment, sending commands to the experiment, coordinating with NASA personnel via voice communication loops, and submitting and retrieving information via documents and forms. At the end of each scenario, RPOT displays the principles correctly or incorrectly demonstrated by the student, along with explanations and background information. The effectiveness of RPOT and the Task Tutor Toolkit are currently under evaluation at NASA.

Ong, James↗

NASA NTRS2014

Human-Robot Interaction Directed Research Project

Human-robot interaction (HRI) is a discipline investigating the factors affecting the interactions between humans and robots. It is important to evaluate how the design of interfaces and command modalities affect the human's ability to perform tasks accurately, efficiently, and effectively when working with a robot. By understanding the effects of interface design on human performance, workload, and situation awareness, interfaces can be developed to appropriately support the human in performing tasks with minimal errors and with appropriate interaction time and effort. Thus, the results of research on human-robot interfaces have direct implications for the design of robotic systems. This DRP concentrates on three areas associated with interfaces and command modalities in HRI which are applicable to NASA robot systems: 1) Video Overlays, 2) Camera Views, and 3) Command Modalities. The first study focused on video overlays that investigated how Augmented Reality (AR) symbology can be added to the human-robot interface to improve teleoperation performance. Three types of AR symbology were explored in this study, command guidance (CG), situation guidance (SG), and both (SCG). CG symbology gives operators explicit instructions on what commands to input, whereas SG symbology gives operators implicit cues so that operators can infer the input commands. The combination of CG and SG provided operators with explicit and implicit cues allowing the operator to choose which symbology to utilize. The objective of the study was to understand how AR symbology affects the human operator's ability to align a robot arm to a target using a flight stick and the ability to allocate attention between the symbology and external views of the world. The study evaluated the effects type of symbology (CG and SG) has on operator tasks performance and attention allocation during teleoperation of a robot arm. The second study expanded on the first study by evaluating the effects of the type of navigational guidance (CG and SG) on operator task performance and attention allocation during teleoperation of a robot arm through uplinked commands. Although this study complements the first study on navigational guidance with hand controllers, it is a separate investigation due to the distinction in intended operators (i.e., crewmembers versus ground-operators). A third study looked at superimposed and integrated overlays for teleoperation of a mobile robot using a hand controller. When AR is superimposed on the external world, it appears to be fixed onto the display and internal to the operators' workstation. Unlike superimposed overlays, integrated overlays often appear as three-dimensional objects and move as if part of the external world. Studies conducted in the aviation domain show that integrated overlays can improve situation awareness and reduce the amount of deviation from the optimal path. The purpose of the study was to investigate whether these results apply to HRI tasks, such as navigation with a mobile robot. HRP GAPS This HRI research contributes to closure of HRP gaps by providing information on how display and control characteristics - those related to guidance, feedback, and command modalities - affect operator performance. The overarching goals are to improve interface usability, reduce operator error, and develop candidate guidelines to design effective human-robot interfaces.

Sandor, Aniko↗

NASA NTRS2014

Human-Robot Interaction Directed Research Project

Human-robot interaction (HRI) is a discipline investigating the factors affecting the interactions between humans and robots. It is important to evaluate how the design of interfaces and command modalities affect the human's ability to perform tasks accurately, efficiently, and effectively when working with a robot. By understanding the effects of interface design on human performance, workload, and situation awareness, interfaces can be developed to appropriately support the human in performing tasks with minimal errors and with appropriate interaction time and effort. Thus, the results of research on human-robot interfaces have direct implications for the design of robotic systems. This DRP concentrates on three areas associated with interfaces and command modalities in HRI which are applicable to NASA robot systems: 1) Video Overlays, 2) Camera Views, and 3) Command Modalities. The first study focused on video overlays that investigated how Augmented Reality (AR) symbology can be added to the human-robot interface to improve teleoperation performance. Three types of AR symbology were explored in this study, command guidance (CG), situation guidance (SG), and both (SCG). CG symbology gives operators explicit instructions on what commands to input, whereas SG symbology gives operators implicit cues so that operators can infer the input commands. The combination of CG and SG provided operators with explicit and implicit cues allowing the operator to choose which symbology to utilize. The objective of the study was to understand how AR symbology affects the human operator's ability to align a robot arm to a target using a flight stick and the ability to allocate attention between the symbology and external views of the world. The study evaluated the effects type of symbology (CG and SG) has on operator tasks performance and attention allocation during teleoperation of a robot arm. The second study expanded on the first study by evaluating the effects of the type of navigational guidance (CG and SG) on operator task performance and attention allocation during teleoperation of a robot arm through uplinked commands. Although this study complements the first study on navigational guidance with hand controllers, it is a separate investigation due to the distinction in intended operators (i.e., crewmembers versus ground-operators). A third study looked at superimposed and integrated overlays for teleoperation of a mobile robot using a hand controller. When AR is superimposed on the external world, it appears to be fixed onto the display and internal to the operators' workstation. Unlike superimposed overlays, integrated overlays often appear as three-dimensional objects and move as if part of the external world. Studies conducted in the aviation domain show that integrated overlays can improve situation awareness and reduce the amount of deviation from the optimal path. The purpose of the study was to investigate whether these results apply to HRI tasks, such as navigation with a mobile robot.

Sandor, Aniko↗

DOE OSTI2025

Enhancing generative molecular design via uncertainty-guided fine-tuning of variational autoencoders

In recent years, deep generative models have been successfully applied to various molecular design tasks, particularly in the life and materials sciences. One critical challenge for pre-trained generative molecular design (GMD) models is to fine-tune them to be better suited for downstream design tasks that aim at optimizing specific molecular properties. However, redesigning and training an existing effective generative model from scratch for each new design task are impractical. Furthermore, the black-box nature of typical downstream tasks that involve property prediction makes it nontrivial to optimize the generative model in a task-specific manner. In this work, we propose an uncertainty-guided fine-tuning strategy that can effectively enhance a pre-trained variational autoencoder (VAE) for GMD through performance feedback in an active learning setting. The strategy begins by quantifying the model uncertainty of the generative model using an efficient active subspace-based UQ (uncertainty quantification) scheme. Next, the decoder diversity within the characterized model uncertainty class is explored to expand the viable space of molecular generation. The low-dimensionality of the active subspace makes this exploration tractable using a black-box optimization scheme, which in turn enables us to identify and leverage a diverse set of high-performing models to generate enhanced molecules. Empirical results across six target molecular properties using multiple VAE-based generative models demonstrate that our uncertainty-guided fine-tuning strategy consistently leads to improved models that outperform the original pre-trained models.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

DOE OSTI2024

Viscosity Measurements of the HLW APPS Glasses

The U.S. Department of Energy is responsible for building the Hanford Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant (WTP) at the Hanford site in Washington to remediate 56 million gallons of radioactive waste historically stored in 177 underground tanks. The Office of River Protection has requested that the Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL) contribute in areas of recognized capabilities and expertise for glass waste form development to support successful startup of the WTP. SRNL support of this work is defined in the Task Technical and Quality Assurance Plan.1 This report provides results from viscosity measurements on a series of simulated nuclear waste glasses designed and fabricated at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL). The glasses were designated the high-level waste – Aspen Process Performance Simulation (HLW-APPS) study glasses. The data provided in this report is to be used in the development, validation, and implementation of enhanced property/composition models for nuclear waste glasses.

12 MANAGEMENT OF RADIOACTIVE AND NON-RADIOACTIVE W↗

DOE OSTI2025

FY 2025 End of Year Report: Seismic Monitoring of Underground Vibration Sources using Distributed Acoustic Sensing (DAS) and Seismometers

This end-of-year report summarizes progress on using seismic monitoring to detect, associate, and locate anomalous vibration signals that may indicate potential containment breaches. The work focused on four key tasks: 1. Developing a database of continuous waveforms and ground-truth event data from multiple sensing modalities. 2. Refining and implementing detection and association algorithms to generate a catalog of anomalous underground activities. 3. Testing and improving distributed acoustic sensing amplitude-based geolocation methods to build an event location catalog. 4. Testing and refining seismic array polarization-based geolocation methods to build an event location catalog. This report provides a brief recap of results from the FY25 midyear report (Tasks 1 and 2) and presents new findings from geolocation methods (Tasks 3 and 4).

58 GEOSCIENCES↗

NASA NTRS1972

ATM experiment S-056 image processing requirements definition

A plan is presented for satisfying the image data processing needs of the S-056 Apollo Telescope Mount experiment. The report is based on information gathered from related technical publications, consultation with numerous image processing experts, and on the experience that was in working on related image processing tasks over a two-year period.

Source record↗

NASA NTRS1974

A real time data acquisition system by satellite relay

The overall aim was to evaluate the future usefulness of satellites in the performance of coordination and management functions related to the operation of flood control and other multipurpose projects in New England. Results on the data collection portion of the work are presented. The principal task was to develop statistics that demonstrate the relationship between conventional means of acquiring hydrologic data and the contribution made by using the satellite and its data collection platforms. Main interest was in determining the availability, reliability and usability of the data. Significant results on DCS show that the DCP's are reliable and useful and satellite data collection appears feasible on a nationwide basis.

Cooper, S.↗

NASA NTRS1975

Space acquired imagery, a versatile tool in the development of energy sources

The two-dimensional images acquired by satellite-borne instruments are continuous, they supplement surface data, subsurface data, and other geophysical data, and they can cut the amount of field work required for a given task by a whole order of magnitude. Images acquired with instruments mounted on the Apollo and Skylab orbiting spacecraft, and on the RB-57 and U-2 aircraft, are displayed and discussed.

Amsbury, D. L.↗