Search NASA⌕ Search

SEARCH · Search NASA

Results for “Autonomous Software”

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.

Quote a phrase for an exact phrase match. Source license links do not imply unrestricted reuse.

At least 505 records · Page 28
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRS2004

Preliminary results of the autonomous sciencecraft experiment

The Autonomous Sciencecraft Experiment (ASE) will operate onboard the Earth Orbiter 1 mission 2004. The ASE software uses onboard continuous planning, robust task and goal-based execution, and onboard machine learning and patter recognition to radically increase science return by enabling intelligent downlink selection and autnomous retargeting. In this paper we will discuss how these AI technologies are synergistically integrated in multi-layer control architecture to enable a virtual spacecraft science agent.

Rabideau, Gregg↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

What is the Role of Usability and Trust in Autonomy?

Usability encompasses learnability, efficiency, memorability, effectiveness, and satisfaction. NASA’s standards for usability acceptance criteria focus on interfaces that help operators achieve their tasks efficiently, effectively, and with satisfaction. However, discussions on usability, especially regarding future highly automated and autonomous systems, rarely include trust. As NASA plans for long-duration exploration missions, it envisions astronauts operating more independently from Mission Control on Earth. This independence will drive the development of these highly automated and autonomous systems that astronauts will use daily. To prepare for this future, our team has developed a scheduling and execution software tool that facilitates self-scheduling, allowing astronauts to independently manage their own schedule without Mission Control’s involvement. Over many years, we have developed, matured, and evaluated our software tool in extreme environments, prioritizing user-centered design and high usability. These evaluations have included multiple campaigns in NASA analogs, including NEEMO, BASALT, and HERA, as well as technology demonstrations onboard the International Space Station. Our recent research on software interfaces for future astronaut autonomy revealed a strong correlation between usability and trust measures. In a controlled lab experiment, we asked novice users to perform a complex scheduling task, during which the software immediately validated the schedule’s constraints and checked for violations. We collected usability (User Experience Questionnaire, UEQ) and trust (Trust in Automated Systems scale, TAS) measures; significant, strong, and moderate correlations emerged between several of the UEQ metrics and TAS. These results support the argument for investing in usability early to enable and sustain trust in highly automated and autonomous systems.

usability↗
NASA NTRS2005

Enabling Autonomous Rover Science through Dynamic Planning and Scheduling

This paper describes how dynamic planning and scheduling techniques can be used onboard a rover to autonomously adjust rover activities in support of science goals. These goals could be identified by scientists on the ground or could be identified by onboard data-analysis software. Several different types of dynamic decisions are described, including the handling of opportunistic science goals identified during rover traverses, preserving high priority science targets when resources, such as power, are unexpectedly over-subscribed, and dynamically adding additional, ground-specified science targets when rover actions are executed more quickly than expected. After describing our specific system approach, we discuss some of the particular challenges we have examined to support autonomous rover decision-making. These include interaction with rover navigation and path-planning software and handling large amounts of uncertainty in state and resource estimations.

planning↗
NASA NTRS1998

The Software Design for the Wide-Field Infrared Explorer Attitude Control System

The Wide-Field Infrared Explorer (WIRE), currently scheduled for launch in September 1998, is the fifth of five spacecraft in the NASA/Goddard Small Explorer (SMEX) series. This paper presents the design of WIRE's Attitude Control System flight software (ACS FSW). WIRE is a momentum-biased, three-axis stabilized stellar pointer which provides high-accuracy pointing and autonomous acquisition for eight to ten stellar targets per orbit. WIRE's short mission life and limited cryogen supply motivate requirements for Sun and Earth avoidance constraints which are designed to prevent catastrophic instrument damage and to minimize the heat load on the cryostat. The FSW implements autonomous fault detection and handling (FDH) to enforce these instrument constraints and to perform several other checks which insure the safety of the spacecraft. The ACS FSW implements modules for sensor data processing, attitude determination, attitude control, guide star acquisition, actuator command generation, command/telemetry processing, and FDH. These software components are integrated with a hierarchical control mode managing module that dictates which software components are currently active. The lowest mode in the hierarchy is the 'safest' one, in the sense that it utilizes a minimal complement of sensors and actuators to keep the spacecraft in a stable configuration (power and pointing constraints are maintained). As higher modes in the hierarchy are achieved, the various software functions are activated by the mode manager, and an increasing level of attitude control accuracy is provided. If FDH detects a constraint violation or other anomaly, it triggers a safing transition to a lower control mode. The WIRE ACS FSW satisfies all target acquisition and pointing accuracy requirements, enforces all pointing constraints, provides the ground with a simple means for reconfiguring the system via table load, and meets all the demands of its real-time embedded environment (16 MHz Intel 80386 processor with 80387 coprocessor running under the VRTX operating system). The mode manager organizes and controls all the software modules used to accomplish these goals, and in particular, the FDH module is tightly coupled with the mode manager.

Anderson, Mark O.↗
NASA NTRS2018

Orion Optical Navigation Progress Toward Exploration: Mission 1

Optical navigation of human spacecraft was proposed on Gemini and implemented successfully on Apollo as a means of autonomously operating the vehicle in the event of lost communication with controllers on Earth. It shares a history with the "method of lunar distances" that was used in the 18th century and gained some notoriety after its use by Captain James Cook during his 1768 Pacific voyage of the HMS Endeavor. The Orion emergency return system utilizing optical navigation has matured in design over the last several years, and is currently undergoing the final implementation and test phase in preparation for Exploration Mission 1 (EM-1) in 2019. The software development is being worked as a Government Furnished Equipment (GFE) project delivered as an application within the Core Flight Software of the Orion camera controller module. The mathematical formulation behind the initial ellipse fit in the image processing is detailed in Christian. The non-linear least squares refinement then follows the technique of Mortari as an estimation process of the planetary limb using the sigmoid function. The Orion optical navigation system uses a body fixed camera, a decision that was driven by mass and mechanism constraints. The general concept of operations involves a 2-hour pass once every 24 hours, with passes specifically placed before all maneuvers to supply accurate navigation information to guidance and targeting. The pass lengths are limited by thermal constraints on the vehicle since the OpNav attitude generally deviates from the thermally stable tail-to-sun attitude maintained during the rest of the orbit coast phase. Calibration is scheduled prior to every pass due to the unknown nature of thermal effects on the lens distortion and the mounting platform deformations between the camera and star trackers. The calibration technique is described in detail by Christian, et al. and simultaneously estimates the Brown-Conrady coefficients and the Star Tracker/Camera interlock angles. Accurate attitude information is provided by the star trackers during each pass. Figure 1 shows the various phases of lunar return navigation when the vehicle is in autonomous operation with lost ground communication. The midcourse maneuvers are placed to control the entry interface conditions to the desired corridor for safe landing. The general form of optical navigation on Orion is where still images of the Moon or Earth are processed to find the apparent angular diameter and centroid in the camera focal plane. This raw data is transformed into range and bearing angle measurements using planetary data and precise star tracker inertial attitude. The measurements are then sent to the main flight computer's Kalman filter to update the onboard state vector. The images are, of course, collected over an arc to converge the state and estimate velocity. The same basic technique was used by Apollo to satisfy loss-of-comm, but Apollo used manual crew sightings with a vehicle-integral sextant instead of autonomously processing optical imagery. The software development is past its Critical Design Review, and is progressing through test and certification for human rating. In support of this, a hardware-in-the-loop test rig was developed in the Johnson Space Center Electro-Optics Lab to exercise the OpNav system prior to integrated testing on the Orion vehicle. Figure 2 shows the rig, which the test team has dubbed OCILOT (Orion Camera In the Loop Optical Testbed). Analysis performed to date shows a delivery that satisfies an allowable entry corridor as shown in Figure 3.

Holt, Greg N.↗
NASA NTRS1988

Telescope protection algorithm for the Space Infrared Telescope Facility

This paper presents a proposed on-board Telescope Protection Algorithm (TPA) for the Space Infrared Telescope Facility (SIRTF). This TPA consists of hardware and software capable of performing both fail-operational and fail-safe modes of operation. In the fail-operational mode, each ephemeris load and slew/dwell command sequence is checked on-board before use. The slew command monitor detects unallowable slew/dwell commands and transfers control to an algorithm which slews to and maintains a safe telescope orientation while preserving precise attitude determination and control. This fail-operational mode is also given the authority to autonomously restart the slew/dwell sequence at a point beyond the faulty command. The fail-safe system consists of software and hardware which detects impending earth, moon, or sun avoidance zone violations and activates a backup hardware safe hold mode. The subject TPA and relevant sensor complement were designed for the SIRTF mission; however, this system can easily be used as a basis for failure detection and correction in a wide range of other missions.

Class, B. F.↗
NASA NTRS2002

Systems Architecture for Fully Autonomous Space Missions

The NASA Goddard Space Flight Center is working to develop a revolutionary new system architecture concept in support of fully autonomous missions. As part of GSFC's contribution to the New Millenium Program (NMP) Space Technology 7 Autonomy and on-Board Processing (ST7-A) Concept Definition Study, the system incorporates the latest commercial Internet and software development ideas and extends them into NASA ground and space segment architectures. The unique challenges facing the exploration of remote and inaccessible locales and the need to incorporate corresponding autonomy technologies within reasonable cost necessitate the re-thinking of traditional mission architectures. A measure of the resiliency of this architecture in its application to a broad range of future autonomy missions will depend on its effectiveness in leveraging from commercial tools developed for the personal computer and Internet markets. Specialized test stations and supporting software come to past as spacecraft take advantage of the extensive tools and research investments of billion-dollar commercial ventures. The projected improvements of the Internet and supporting infrastructure go hand-in-hand with market pressures that provide continuity in research. By taking advantage of consumer-oriented methods and processes, space-flight missions will continue to leverage on investments tailored to provide better services at reduced cost. The application of ground and space segment architectures each based on Local Area Networks (LAN), the use of personal computer-based operating systems, and the execution of activities and operations through a Wide Area Network (Internet) enable a revolution in spacecraft mission formulation, implementation, and flight operations. Hardware and software design, development, integration, test, and flight operations are all tied-in closely to a common thread that enables the smooth transitioning between program phases. The application of commercial software development techniques lays the foundation for delivery of product-oriented flight software modules and models. Software can then be readily applied to support the on-board autonomy required for mission self-management. An on-board intelligent system, based on advanced scripting languages, facilitates the mission autonomy required to offload ground system resources, and enables the spacecraft to manage itself safely through an efficient and effective process of reactive planning, science data acquisition, synthesis, and transmission to the ground. Autonomous ground systems in turn coordinate and support schedule contact times with the spacecraft. Specific autonomy software modules on-board include mission and science planners, instrument and subsystem control, and fault tolerance response software, all residing within a distributed computing environment supported through the flight LAN. Autonomy also requires the minimization of human intervention between users on the ground and the spacecraft, and hence calls for the elimination of the traditional operations control center as a funnel for data manipulation. Basic goal-oriented commands are sent directly from the user to the spacecraft through a distributed internet-based payload operations "center". The ensuing architecture calls for the use of spacecraft as point extensions on the Internet. This paper will detail the system architecture implementation chosen to enable cost-effective autonomous missions with applicability to a broad range of conditions. It will define the structure needed for implementation of such missions, including software and hardware infrastructures. The overall architecture is then laid out as a common thread in the mission life cycle from formulation through implementation and flight operations.

Esper, Jamie↗
NASA NTRS2005

Challenges of Developing New Classes of NASA Self-Managing Mission

NASA is proposing increasingly complex missions that will require a high degree of autonomy and autonomicity. These missions pose hereto unforeseen problems and raise issues that have not been well-addressed by the community. Assuring success of such missions will require new software development techniques and tools. This paper discusses some of the challenges that NASA and the rest of the software development community are facing in developing these ever-increasingly complex systems. We give an overview of a proposed NASA mission as well as techniques and tools that are being developed to address autonomic management and the complexity issues inherent in these missions.

Hinchey, M. G.↗
NASA NTRS2002

Real-Time Embedded Software Verification and Validation 2001

As the space applications become more complex and timing constraints on control actions are more stringent, the task of integrating and testing NASA's real-time systems (such as X-38 Crew Return Vehicle, and certain International Space Station autonomous systems) has become a great challenge. A testing environment where can preserve consistent temporal behaviors as in the target execution must be established for system-level verification and software quality assurance. Our goal is to develop an analysis suite for validation and verification of real-time systems that are used to perform human- in-the-loop control operations during safety-critical missions. The suite will be able to carry out quantitative approaches of coverage diagnostic and temporal behavior evaluation in order to measure test coverage, to optimize test utilization, and to verify timing correctness.

Lee, Yann-Hang↗
NASA NTRS2006

AERCam Autonomy: Intelligent Software Architecture for Robotic Free Flying Nanosatellite Inspection Vehicles

The NASA Johnson Space Center has developed a nanosatellite-class Free Flyer intended for future external inspection and remote viewing of human spacecraft. The Miniature Autonomous Extravehicular Robotic Camera (Mini AERCam) technology demonstration unit has been integrated into the approximate form and function of a flight system. The spherical Mini AERCam Free Flyer is 7.5 inches in diameter and weighs approximately 10 pounds, yet it incorporates significant additional capabilities compared to the 35-pound, 14-inch diameter AERCam Sprint that flew as a Shuttle flight experiment in 1997. Mini AERCam hosts a full suite of miniaturized avionics, instrumentation, communications, navigation, power, propulsion, and imaging subsystems, including digital video cameras and a high resolution still image camera. The vehicle is designed for either remotely piloted operations or supervised autonomous operations, including automatic stationkeeping, point-to-point maneuvering, and waypoint tracking. The Mini AERCam Free Flyer is accompanied by a sophisticated control station for command and control, as well as a docking system for automated deployment, docking, and recharge at a parent spacecraft. Free Flyer functional testing has been conducted successfully on both an airbearing table and in a six-degree-of-freedom closed-loop orbital simulation with avionics hardware in the loop. Mini AERCam aims to provide beneficial on-orbit views that cannot be obtained from fixed cameras, cameras on robotic manipulators, or cameras carried by crewmembers during extravehicular activities (EVA s). On Shuttle or International Space Station (ISS), for example, Mini AERCam could support external robotic operations by supplying orthogonal views to the intravehicular activity (IVA) robotic operator, supply views of EVA operations to IVA and/or ground crews monitoring the EVA, and carry out independent visual inspections of areas of interest around the spacecraft. To enable these future benefits with minimal impact on IVA operators and ground controllers, the Mini AERCam system architecture incorporates intelligent systems attributes that support various autonomous capabilities. 1) A robust command sequencer enables task-level command scripting. Command scripting is employed for operations such as automatic inspection scans over a region of interest, and operator-hands-off automated docking. 2) A system manager built on the same expert-system software as the command sequencer provides detection and smart-response capability for potential system-level anomalies, like loss of communications between the Free Flyer and control station. 3) An AERCam dynamics manager provides nominal and off-nominal management of guidance, navigation, and control (GN&C) functions. It is employed for safe trajectory monitoring, contingency maneuvering, and related roles. This paper will describe these architectural components of Mini AERCam autonomy, as well as the interaction of these elements with a human operator during supervised autonomous control.

Fredrickson, Steven E.↗
NASA NTRS2006

Tracking Positions and Attitudes of Mars Rovers

The Surface Attitude Position and Pointing (SAPP) software, which runs on computers aboard the Mars Exploration Rovers, tracks the positions and attitudes of the rovers on the surface of Mars. Each rover acquires data on attitude from a combination of accelerometer readings and images of the Sun acquired autonomously, using a pointable camera to search the sky for the Sun. Depending on the nature of movement commanded remotely by operators on Earth, the software propagates attitude and position by use of either (1) accelerometer and gyroscope readings or (2) gyroscope readings and wheel odometry. Where necessary, visual odometry is performed on images to fine-tune the position updates, particularly on high-wheel-slip terrain. The attitude data are used by other software and ground-based personnel for pointing a high-gain antenna, planning and execution of driving, and positioning and aiming scientific instruments.

Ali, Khaled↗
NASA NTRS2020

Results From the First Four Years of Aegis Autonomous Target-ing for Chemcam on Mars Science Laboratory and New Capability Planned for Supercam on Mars 2020 Rover

Autonomous Exploration for Gathering Increased Science (AEGIS) was uploaded on the NASA Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) Curiosity rover in 2015 for autonomous target selection. This paper presents results from the first four years of its regular opera-tion on Mars for autonomously selecting targets for the ChemCam remote geochemical spectrometer with a focus on the most recent findings. Results show that AEGIS has targeted the most desired material greater than 93% of the time vs 24% without onboard intelligent targeting. There has also been a notable increase in the rate of ChemCam observations. AE-GIS is also part of surface flight software for the NASA Mars 2020 Perseverance rover. This paper describes new AEGIS capabilities that will be availa-ble for autonomously targeting the SuperCam in-strument after the planned 18 February 2021 landing in Jezero crater on Mars.

Castano, R↗
NASA NTRS2004

Autonomous Multi-sensor Coordination: The Science Goal Monitor

Next-generation science and exploration systems will employ new observation strategies that will use multiple sensors in a dynamic environment to provide high quality monitoring, self-consistent analyses and informed decision making. The Science Goal Monitor (SGM) is a prototype software tool being developed to explore the nature of automation necessary to enable dynamic observing of earth phenomenon. The tools being developed in SGM improve our ability to autonomously monitor multiple independent sensors and coordinate reactions to better observe the dynamic phenomena. The SGM system enables users to specify events of interest and how to react when an event is detected. The system monitors streams of data to identify occurrences of the key events previously specified by the scientist/user. When an event occurs, the system autonomously coordinates the execution of the users desired reactions between different sensors. The information can be used to rapidly respond to a variety of fast temporal events. Investigators will no longer have to rely on after-the-fact data analysis to determine what happened. Our paper describes a series of prototype demonstrations that we have developed using SGM and NASA's Earth Observing-1 (EO-1) satellite and Earth Observing Systems Aqua/Terra spacecrafts MODIS instrument. Our demonstrations show the promise of coordinating data from different sources, analyzing the data for a relevant event, autonomously updating and rapidly obtaining a follow-on relevant image. SGM is being used to investigate forest fires, floods and volcanic eruptions. We are now identifying new earth science scenarios that will have more complex SGM reasoning. By developing and testing a prototype in an operational environment, we are also establishing and gathering metrics to gauge the success of automating science campaigns.

Koratkar, Anuradha↗
NASA NTRS1990

A control architecture for a Mars walking vehicle

A design framework for a Mars Rover, intended for missions where a high degree of autonomy is dictated, is presented. The framework provides a logical computing architecture for rover mobility and local navigation subsystem design by defining a set of functional modules and interfaces to facilitate software and hardware specification. The similarities and dissimilarities between the present approach and related architectures for autonomous navigation and robotic control are discussed. An approach is presented for specifying actions to be taken by the mobility and local navigation subsystems of the rover.

Spiessbach, Andrew J.↗
NASA NTRS1999

Software Surrogate

In 1994, Blackboard Technology received a NASA Phase I SBIR award entitled "A Blackboard-Based Framework for Mixed-Initiative, Crewed- Space-System Applications." This research continued in Phase II at JSC, where a generic architecture was developed in which a software surrogate serves as the operator's representative in the fast-paced realm of nearly autonomous, intelligent systems. This SBIR research effort addressed the need to support human-operator monitoring and intervention with intelligent systems such as those being developed for NASA's crewed space program.

Source record↗
NASA NTRS2004

Using Ontologies to Formalize Services Specifications in Multi-Agent Systems

One key issue in multi-agent systems (MAS) is their ability to interact and exchange information autonomously across applications. To secure agent interoperability, designers must rely on a communication protocol that allows software agents to exchange meaningful information. In this paper we propose using ontologies as such communication protocol. Ontologies capture the semantics of the operations and services provided by agents, allowing interoperability and information exchange in a MAS. Ontologies are a formal, machine processable, representation that allows to capture the semantics of a domain and, to derive meaningful information by way of logical inference. In our proposal we use a formal knowledge representation language (OWL) that translates into Description Logics (a subset of first order logic), thus eliminating ambiguities and providing a solid base for machine based inference. The main contribution of this approach is to make the requirements explicit, centralize the specification in a single document (the ontology itself), at the same that it provides a formal, unambiguous representation that can be processed by automated inference machines.

Breitman, Karin Koogan↗
NASA NTRS2006

Reconfigurable Software for Controlling Formation Flying

Software for a system to control the trajectories of multiple spacecraft flying in formation is being developed to reflect underlying concepts of (1) a decentralized approach to guidance and control and (2) reconfigurability of the control system, including reconfigurability of the software and of control laws. The software is organized as a modular network of software tasks. The computational load for both determining relative trajectories and planning maneuvers is shared equally among all spacecraft in a cluster. The flexibility and robustness of the software are apparent in the fact that tasks can be added, removed, or replaced during flight. In a computational simulation of a representative formation-flying scenario, it was demonstrated that the following are among the services performed by the software: Uploading of commands from a ground station and distribution of the commands among the spacecraft, Autonomous initiation and reconfiguration of formations, Autonomous formation of teams through negotiations among the spacecraft, Working out details of high-level commands (e.g., shapes and sizes of geometrically complex formations), Implementation of a distributed guidance law providing autonomous optimization and assignment of target states, and Implementation of a decentralized, fuel-optimal, impulsive control law for planning maneuvers.

Mueller, Joseph B.↗