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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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At least 487 records · Page 27
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRS1991

A computer architecture for intelligent machines

The Theory of Intelligent Machines proposes a hierarchical organization for the functions of an autonomous robot based on the Principle of Increasing Precision With Decreasing Intelligence. An analytic formulation of this theory using information-theoretic measures of uncertainty for each level of the intelligent machine has been developed in recent years. A computer architecture that implements the lower two levels of the intelligent machine is presented. The architecture supports an event-driven programming paradigm that is independent of the underlying computer architecture and operating system. Details of Execution Level controllers for motion and vision systems are addressed, as well as the Petri net transducer software used to implement Coordination Level functions. Extensions to UNIX and VxWorks operating systems which enable the development of a heterogeneous, distributed application are described. A case study illustrates how this computer architecture integrates real-time and higher-level control of manipulator and vision systems.

Lefebvre, D. R.↗
NASA NTRS1992

A computer architecture for intelligent machines

The theory of intelligent machines proposes a hierarchical organization for the functions of an autonomous robot based on the principle of increasing precision with decreasing intelligence. An analytic formulation of this theory using information-theoretic measures of uncertainty for each level of the intelligent machine has been developed. The authors present a computer architecture that implements the lower two levels of the intelligent machine. The architecture supports an event-driven programming paradigm that is independent of the underlying computer architecture and operating system. Execution-level controllers for motion and vision systems are briefly addressed, as well as the Petri net transducer software used to implement coordination-level functions. A case study illustrates how this computer architecture integrates real-time and higher-level control of manipulator and vision systems.

Lefebvre, D. R.↗
NASA NTRS2005

Data Fusion for Enhanced Aircraft Engine Prognostics and Health Management

Aircraft gas-turbine engine data is available from a variety of sources, including on-board sensor measurements, maintenance histories, and component models. An ultimate goal of Propulsion Health Management (PHM) is to maximize the amount of meaningful information that can be extracted from disparate data sources to obtain comprehensive diagnostic and prognostic knowledge regarding the health of the engine. Data fusion is the integration of data or information from multiple sources for the achievement of improved accuracy and more specific inferences than can be obtained from the use of a single sensor alone. The basic tenet underlying the data/ information fusion concept is to leverage all available information to enhance diagnostic visibility, increase diagnostic reliability and reduce the number of diagnostic false alarms. This report describes a basic PHM data fusion architecture being developed in alignment with the NASA C-17 PHM Flight Test program. The challenge of how to maximize the meaningful information extracted from disparate data sources to obtain enhanced diagnostic and prognostic information regarding the health and condition of the engine is the primary goal of this endeavor. To address this challenge, NASA Glenn Research Center, NASA Dryden Flight Research Center, and Pratt & Whitney have formed a team with several small innovative technology companies to plan and conduct a research project in the area of data fusion, as it applies to PHM. Methodologies being developed and evaluated have been drawn from a wide range of areas including artificial intelligence, pattern recognition, statistical estimation, and fuzzy logic. This report will provide a chronology and summary of the work accomplished under this research contract.

Volponi, Al↗
NASA NTRS2008

2008 Year in Review

In February of 2008; NASA Stennis Space Center (SSC), NASA Kennedy Space Center (KSC), and The Applied Research Laboratory at Penn State University demonstrated a pilot implementation of an Integrated System Health Management (ISHM) capability at the Launch Complex 20 of KSC. The following significant accomplishments are associated with this development: (1) implementation of an architecture for ground operations ISHM, based on networked intelligent elements; (2) Use of standards for management of data, information, and knowledge (DIaK) leading to modular ISHM implementation with interoperable elements communicating according to standards (three standards were used: IEEE 1451 family of standards for smart sensors and actuators, Open Systems Architecture for Condition Based Maintenance (OSA-CBM) standard for communicating DIaK describing the condition of elements of a system, and the OPC standard for communicating data); (3) ISHM implementation using interoperable modules addressing health management of subsystems; and (4) use of a physical intelligent sensor node (smart network element or SNE capable of providing data and health) along with classic sensors originally installed in the facility. An operational demonstration included detection of anomalies (sensor failures, leaks, etc.), determination of causes and effects, communication among health nodes, and user interfaces.

Figueroa, Jorge Fernando↗
NASA NTRS2012

Optical Phase Recovery and Locking in a PPM Laser Communication Link

Free-space optical communication holds great promise for future space missions requiring high data rates. For data communication in deep space, the current architecture employs pulse position modulation (PPM). In this scheme, the light is transmitted and detected as pulses within an array of time slots. While the PPM method is efficient for data transmission, the phase of the laser light is not utilized. The phase coherence of a PPM optical signal has been investigated with the goal of developing a new laser communication and ranging scheme that utilizes optical coherence within the established PPM architecture and photon-counting detection (PCD). Experimental measurements of a PPM modulated optical signal were conducted, and modeling code was developed to generate random PPM signals and simulate spectra via FFT (Fast Fourier Transform) analysis. The experimental results show very good agreement with the simulations and confirm that coherence is preserved despite modulation with high extinction ratios and very low duty cycles. A real-time technique has been developed to recover the phase information through the mixing of a PPM signal with a frequency-shifted local oscillator (LO). This mixed signal is amplified, filtered, and integrated to generate a voltage proportional to the phase of the modulated signal. By choosing an appropriate time constant for integration, one can maintain a phase lock despite long dark times between consecutive pulses with low duty cycle. A proof-of-principle demonstration was first achieved with an RF-based PPM signal and test setup. With the same principle method, an optical carrier within a PPM modulated laser beam could also be tracked and recovered. A reference laser was phase-locked to an independent pulsed laser signal with low-duty-cycle pseudo-random PPM codes. In this way, the drifting carrier frequency in the primary laser source is tracked via its phase change in the mixed beat note, while the corresponding voltage feedback maintains the phase lock between the two laser sources. The novelty and key significance of this work is that the carrier phase information can be harnessed within an optical communication link based on PPM-PCD architecture. This technology development could lead to quantum-limited efficient performance within the communication link itself, as well as enable high-resolution optical tracking capabilities for planetary science and spacecraft navigation.

Aveline, David C.↗
NASA NTRS2005

Modern Radar Techniques for Geophysical Applications: Two Examples

The last decade of the evolution of radar was heavily influenced by the rapid increase in the information processing capabilities. Advances in solid state radio HF devices, digital technology, computing architectures and software offered the designers to develop very efficient radars. In designing modern radars the emphasis goes towards the simplification of the system hardware, reduction of overall power, which is compensated by coding and real time signal processing techniques. Radars are commonly employed in geophysical radio soundings like probing the ionosphere; stratosphere-mesosphere measurement, weather forecast, GPR and radio-glaciology etc. In the laboratorio di Geofisica Ambientale of the Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia (INGV), Rome, Italy, we developed two pulse compression radars. The first is a HF radar called AIS-INGV; Advanced Ionospheric Sounder designed both for the purpose of research and for routine service of the HF radio wave propagation forecast. The second is a VHF radar called GLACIORADAR, which will be substituting the high power envelope radar used by the Italian Glaciological group. This will be employed in studying the sub glacial structures of Antarctica, giving information about layering, the bed rock and sub glacial lakes if present. These are low power radars, which heavily rely on advanced hardware and powerful real time signal processing. Additional information is included in the original extended abstract.

Arokiasamy, B. J.↗
NASA NTRS1983

Space station needs, attributes and architectural options study

All the candidate Technology Development missions investigated during the space station needs, attributes, and architectural options study are described. All the mission data forms plus additional information such as, cost, drawings, functional flows, etc., generated in support of these mission is included with a computer generated mission data form.

Source record↗
NASA NTRS1992

Analysis of fault-tolerant neurocontrol architectures

The fault-tolerance of analog parallel distributed implementations of a multivariable aircraft neurocontroller is analyzed by simulating weight and neuron failures in a simplified scheme of analog processing based on the functional architecture of the ETANN chip (Electrically Trainable Artificial Neural Network). The neural information processing is found to be only partially distributed throughout the set of weights of the neurocontroller synthesized with the backpropagation algorithm. Although the degree of distribution of the neural processing, and consequently the fault-tolerance of the neurocontroller, could be enhanced using Locally Distributed Weight and Neuron Approaches, a satisfactory level of fault-tolerance could only be obtained by retraining the degrated VLSI neurocontroller. The possibility of maintaining neurocontrol performance and stability in the presence of single weight of neuron failures was demonstrated through an automated retraining procedure of the neurocontroller based on a pre-programmed choice and sequence of the training parameters.

Troudet, T.↗
NASA NTRS1994

New architectural paradigms for multi-petabyte distributed storage systems

In the not too distant future, programs such as NASA's Earth Observing System, NSF/ARPA/NASA's Digital Libraries Initiative and Intelligence Community's (NSA, CIA, NRO, etc.) mass storage system upgrades will all require multi-petabyte (petabyte: 1015 bytes of bitfile data) (or larger) distributed storage solutions. None of these requirements, as currently defined, will meet their objectives utilizing either today's architectural paradigms or storage solutions. Radically new approaches will be required to not only store and manage veritable 'mountain ranges of data', but to make the cost of ownership affordable, much less practical in today's (and certainly the future's) austere budget environment! Within this paper we will explore new architectural paradigms and project systems performance benefits and dollars per petabyte of information stored. We will discuss essential 'top down' approaches to achieving an overall systems level performance capability sufficient to meet the challenges of these major programs.

Lee, Richard R.↗
NASA NTRS2000

2000 Survey of Distributed Spacecraft Technologies and Architectures for NASA's Earth Science Enterprise in the 2010-2025 Timeframe

The study investigates NASA's Earth Science Enterprise needs for Distributed Spacecraft Technologies in the 2010-2025 timeframe. In particular, the study focused on the Earth Science Vision Initiative and extrapolation of the measurement architecture from the 2002-2010 time period. Earth Science Enterprise documents were reviewed. Interviews were conducted with a number of Earth scientists and technologists. fundamental principles of formation flying were also explored. The results led to the development of four notional distribution spacecraft architectures. These four notional architectures (global constellations, virtual platforms, precision formation flying, and sensorwebs) are presented. They broadly and generically cover the distributed spacecraft architectures needed by Earth Science in the post-2010 era. These notional architectures are used to identify technology needs and drivers. Technology needs are subsequently grouped into five categories: Systems and architecture development tools; Miniaturization, production, manufacture, test and calibration; Data networks and information management; Orbit control, planning and operations; and Launch and deployment. The current state of the art and expected developments are explored. High-value technology areas are identified for possible future funding emphasis.

Ticker, Ronald L.↗
NASA NTRS2002

Conceptual Study of Intelligent Data Archives of the Future

A conceptual architecture study is under way to address the problem of getting the most scientific value from the large volumes of Earth and space science data that NASA expects to accumulate in the future. This involves efficient storage and access, but goes beyond that to facilitate intelligent data understanding and utilization through modeling realistic virtual entities with predictive capabilities. The objective of the study is to formulate ideas and concepts and to provide recommendations that lead to prototyping and implementation in the period from 2010 to 2020. The approach consists of the definition of future scenarios and needs for data usage in applications (in consultation with scientific and applications users), projection of advances in technologies, and an abstraction of an intelligent archive architecture. Strategic evolution is considered in various areas such as storage, data, information and knowledge management, data ingest and mining, user interfaces, and advances in intelligent data understanding algorithms.

Ramapriyan, H. K.↗
NASA NTRS1998

A Scalability Model for ECS's Data Server

This report presents in four chapters a model for the scalability analysis of the Data Server subsystem of the Earth Observing System Data and Information System (EOSDIS) Core System (ECS). The model analyzes if the planned architecture of the Data Server will support an increase in the workload with the possible upgrade and/or addition of processors, storage subsystems, and networks. The approaches in the report include a summary of the architecture of ECS's Data server as well as a high level description of the Ingest and Retrieval operations as they relate to ECS's Data Server. This description forms the basis for the development of the scalability model of the data server and the methodology used to solve it.

Menasce, Daniel A.↗
NASA NTRS2004

Development of an Information Fusion System for Engine Diagnostics and Health Management

Aircraft gas-turbine engine data are available from a variety of sources including on-board sensor measurements, maintenance histories, and component models. An ultimate goal of Propulsion Health Management (PHM) is to maximize the amount of meaningful information that can be extracted from disparate data sources to obtain comprehensive diagnostic and prognostic knowledge regarding the health of the engine. Data Fusion is the integration of data or information from multiple sources, to achieve improved accuracy and more specific inferences than can be obtained from the use of a single sensor alone. The basic tenet underlying the data/information fusion concept is to leverage all available information to enhance diagnostic visibility, increase diagnostic reliability and reduce the number of diagnostic false alarms. This paper describes a basic PHM Data Fusion architecture being developed in alignment with the NASA C17 Propulsion Health Management (PHM) Flight Test program. The challenge of how to maximize the meaningful information extracted from disparate data sources to obtain enhanced diagnostic and prognostic information regarding the health and condition of the engine is the primary goal of this endeavor. To address this challenge, NASA Glenn Research Center (GRC), NASA Dryden Flight Research Center (DFRC) and Pratt & Whitney (P&W) have formed a team with several small innovative technology companies to plan and conduct a research project in the area of data fusion as applied to PHM. Methodologies being developed and evaluated have been drawn from a wide range of areas including artificial intelligence, pattern recognition, statistical estimation, and fuzzy logic. This paper will provide a broad overview of this work, discuss some of the methodologies employed and give some illustrative examples.

Volponi, Allan J.↗
NASA NTRS1998

Future human bone research in space

Skylab crewmembers demonstrated negative calcium (Ca) balance reaching about -300 mg/day by flight day 84. Limited bone density (BMD) measurements documented that bone was not lost equally from all parts of the skeleton. Subsequent BMD studies during long duration Russian flights documented the regional extent of bone loss. These studies demonstrated mean losses in the spine, femur neck, trochanter, and pelvis of about 1%-1.6% with large differences between individuals as well as between bone sites in a given individual. Limited available data indicate postflight bone recovery occurred in some individuals, but may require several years for complete restoration. Long duration bedrest studies showed a similar pattern of bone loss and calcium balance (-180 mg/day) as spaceflight. During long duration bedrest, resorption markers were elevated, formation markers were unchanged, 1,25 vitamin D (VitD) and calcium absorption were decreased, and serum ionized Ca was increased. Although this information is a good beginning, additional spaceflight research is needed to assess architectural and subregional bone changes, elucidate mechanisms, and develop efficient as well as effective countermeasures. Space research poses a number of unique problems not encountered in ground-based laboratory research. Therefore, researchers contemplating human spaceflight research need to consider a number of unique problems related to spaceflight in their experimental design.

NASA Center JSC↗
NASA NTRS2005

Project Integration Architecture: Formulation of Dimensionality in Semantic Parameters Outline

One of several key elements of the Project Integration Architecture (PIA) is the formulation of parameter objects which convey meaningful semantic information. The infusion of measurement dimensionality into such objects is an important part of that effort since it promises to automate the conversion of units between cooperating applications and, thereby, eliminate the mistakes that have occasionally beset other systems of information transport. This paper discusses the conceptualization of dimensionality developed as a result of that effort.

Jones, William Henry↗
NASA NTRS2017

Considerations for GPU SEE Testing

This presentation will discuss the considerations an engineer should take to perform Single Event Effects (SEE) testing on GPU devices. Notable topics will include setup complexity, architecture insight which permits cross platform normalization, acquiring a reasonable detail of information from the test suite, and a few lessons learned from preliminary testing.

NASA Electronic Parts and Packaging (NEPP) Program↗
NASA NTRS2026

A Multi-Tier Autonomous Aerial Architecture for Wildfire Detection, Characterization, and Communication in Infrastructure-Denied Environments

Wildfire response depends on how fast an ignition can be confirmed and located, especially in remote regions where ground-based communication and monitoring may be limited. Geostationary sensors provide frequent observations but at kilometer-scale resolution, which is too coarse to resolve small fires in remote terrain. Ground camera networks require sightlines and infrastructure that back-country areas lack. To address these limitations, this work proposes a Multi-Tier Autonomous Wildfire Intelligence System that combines wide-area monitoring with targeted, high-resolution sensing. A solar-powered high-altitude long endurance (HALE) platform operating at approximately 60,000 ft provides persistent wide-area thermal and optical surveillance, running onboard edge inference to screen candidate ignitions and reduce false positives and downlink bandwidth. When a candidate ignition is detected, low-altitude uncrewed aircraft systems (UAS) can be deployed to conduct localized observations, including high-resolution imaging and atmospheric measurements such as wind and plume observation. By combining persistent detection with local sensing, the proposed architecture is designed to provide first responders with timely, high-resolution information about fire location and behavior to aid in emergency decision making.

Wildfire management, UAS, drones↗