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At least 91 records · Page 5

MTK: An AI tool for model-based reasoning

A 1988 goal for the Systems Autonomy Demonstration Project Office of the NASA Ames Research Office is to apply model-based representation and reasoning techniques in a knowledge-based system that will provide monitoring, fault diagnosis, control, and trend analysis of the Space Station Thermal Control System (TCS). A number of issues raised during the development of the first prototype system inspired the design and construction of a model-based reasoning tool called MTK, which was used in the building of the second prototype. These issues are outlined here with examples from the thermal system to highlight the motivating factors behind them, followed by an overview of the capabilities of MTK, which was developed to address these issues in a generic fashion.

Erickson, William K.

Space power system automation approaches at the George C. Marshall Space Flight Center

This paper discusses the automation approaches employed in various electrical power system breadboards at the Marshall Space Flight Center. Of particular interest is the application of knowledge-based systems to fault management and dynamic payload scheduling. A description of each major breadboard and the automation approach taken for each is given.

Weeks, D. J.

LERC power system autonomy program 1990 demonstration

The NASA Lewis Research Center has undertaken a program for the development of space systems automation, with a view to increased reliability, safety, payload capability, and decreased operational costs. The NASA Space Station is a primary area of application for the techniques thus developed. Attention is presently given to the activities associated with the Power Systems Autonomy Demonstration Project, which has a projected demonstration date in 1990 and will integrate knowledge-based systems into a real-time environment. Two coordinated systems under expert system control will be demonstrated.

Faymon, Karl A.

Building intelligent systems - Artificial intelligence research at NASA Ames Research Center

The basic components that make up the goal of building autonomous intelligent systems are discussed, and ongoing work at the NASA Ames Research Center is described. It is noted that a clear progression of systems can be seen through research settings (both within and external to NASA) to Space Station testbeds to systems which actually fly on the Space Station. The starting point for the discussion is a 'truly' autonomous Space Station intelligent system, responsible for a major portion of Space Station control. Attention is given to research in fiscal 1987, including reasoning under uncertainty, machine learning, causal modeling and simulation, knowledge from design through operations, advanced planning work, validation methodologies, and hierarchical control of and distributed cooperation among multiple knowledge-based systems.

Friedland, Peter

The Mission Operations Planning Assistant

The Mission Operations Planning Assistant (MOPA) is a knowledge-based system developed to support the planning and scheduling of instrument activities on the Upper Atmospheric Research Satellite (UARS). The MOPA system represents and maintains instrument plans at two levels of abstraction in order to keep plans comprehensible to both UARS Principal Investigators and Command Management personnel. The hierarchical representation of plans also allows MOPA to automatically create detailed instrument activity plans from which spacecraft command loads may be generated. The MOPA system was developed on a Symbolics 3640 computer using the ZetaLisp and ART languages. MOPA's features include a textual and graphical interface for plan inspection and modification, recognition of instrument operational constraint violations during the planning process, and consistency maintenance between the different planning levels. This paper describes the current MOPA system.

Schuetzle, James G.

The mission operations planning assistant

The Mission Operations Planning Assistant (MOPA) is a knowledge-based system developed to support the planning and scheduling of instrument activities on the Upper Atmospheric Research Satellite (UARS). The MOPA system represents and maintains instrument plans at two levels of abstraction in order to keep plans comprehensible to both UARS Prinicpal Investigators and Command Management personnel. The hierarchical representation of plans also allows MOPA to automatically create detailed instrument activity plans from which spacecraft command loads may be generated. The MOPA system was developed on a Symbolics 3640 computer using the ZETALISP and ART languages. MOPA's features include a textual and graphical interface for plan inspection and modification, recognition of instrument operational constraint violations during the planning process, and consistency maintenance between the different planning levels. This paper describes the current MOPA system.

Schuetzle, James G.

Simplifying the construction of domain-specific automatic programming systems: The NASA automated software development workstation project

An overview is presented of the Automated Software Development Workstation Project, an effort to explore knowledge-based approaches to increasing software productivity. The project focuses on applying the concept of domain specific automatic programming systems (D-SAPSs) to application domains at NASA's Johnson Space Flight Center. A version of a D-SAPS developed in Phase 1 of the project for the domain of space station momentum management is described. How problems encountered during its implementation led researchers to concentrate on simplifying the process of building and extending such systems is discussed. Researchers propose to do this by attacking three observed bottlenecks in the D-SAPS development process through the increased automation of the acquisition of programming knowledge and the use of an object oriented development methodology at all stages of the program design. How these ideas are being implemented in the Bauhaus, a prototype workstation for D-SAPS development is discussed.

Allen, Bradley P.

Knowledge based systems: A preliminary survey of selected issues and techniques

It is only recently that research in Artificial Intelligence (AI) is accomplishing practical results. Most of these results can be attributed to the design and use of expert systems (or Knowledge-Based Systems, KBS) - problem-solving computer programs that can reach a level of performance comparable to that of a human expert in some specialized problem domain. But many computer systems designed to see images, hear sounds, and recognize speech are still in a fairly early stage of development. In this report, a preliminary survey of recent work in the KBS is reported, explaining KBS concepts and issues and techniques used to construct them. Application considerations to construct the KBS and potential KBS research areas are identified. A case study (MYCIN) of a KBS is also provided.

Dominick, Wayne D.

Knowledge Based Systems: A Critical Survey of Major Concepts, Issues, and Techniques

This Working Paper Series entry presents a detailed survey of knowledge based systems. After being in a relatively dormant state for many years, only recently is Artificial Intelligence (AI) - that branch of computer science that attempts to have machines emulate intelligent behavior - accomplishing practical results. Most of these results can be attributed to the design and use of Knowledge-Based Systems, KBSs (or ecpert systems) - problem solving computer programs that can reach a level of performance comparable to that of a human expert in some specialized problem domain. These systems can act as a consultant for various requirements like medical diagnosis, military threat analysis, project risk assessment, etc. These systems possess knowledge to enable them to make intelligent desisions. They are, however, not meant to replace the human specialists in any particular domain. A critical survey of recent work in interactive KBSs is reported. A case study (MYCIN) of a KBS, a list of existing KBSs, and an introduction to the Japanese Fifth Generation Computer Project are provided as appendices. Finally, an extensive set of KBS-related references is provided at the end of the report.

Dominick, Wayne D.

USL NASA/RECON project presentations at the 1985 ACM Computer Science Conference: Abstracts and visuals

This Working Paper Series entry represents the abstracts and visuals associated with presentations delivered by six USL NASA/RECON research team members at the above named conference. The presentations highlight various aspects of NASA contract activities pursued by the participants as they relate to individual research projects. The titles of the six presentations are as follows: (1) The Specification and Design of a Distributed Workstation; (2) An Innovative, Multidisciplinary Educational Program in Interactive Information Storage and Retrieval; (3) Critical Comparative Analysis of the Major Commercial IS and R Systems; (4) Design Criteria for a PC-Based Common User Interface to Remote Information Systems; (5) The Design of an Object-Oriented Graphics Interface; and (6) Knowledge-Based Information Retrieval: Techniques and Applications.

Dominick, Wayne D.

Representation and matching of knowledge to design digital systems

A knowledge-based expert system is described that provides an approach to solve a problem requiring an expert with considerable domain expertise and facts about available digital hardware building blocks. To design digital hardware systems from their high level VHDL (Very High Speed Integrated Circuit Hardware Description Language) representation to their finished form, a special data representation is required. This data representation as well as the functioning of the overall system is described.

Jones, J. U.

Automatic Detection of Electric Power Troubles (ADEPT)

ADEPT is an expert system that integrates knowledge from three different suppliers to offer an advanced fault-detection system, and is designed for two modes of operation: real-time fault isolation and simulated modeling. Real time fault isolation of components is accomplished on a power system breadboard through the Fault Isolation Expert System (FIES II) interface with a rule system developed in-house. Faults are quickly detected and displayed and the rules and chain of reasoning optionally provided on a Laser printer. This system consists of a simulated Space Station power module using direct-current power supplies for Solar arrays on three power busses. For tests of the system's ability to locate faults inserted via switches, loads are configured by an INTEL microcomputer and the Symbolics artificial intelligence development system. As these loads are resistive in nature, Ohm's Law is used as the basis for rules by which faults are located. The three-bus system can correct faults automatically where there is a surplus of power available on any of the three busses. Techniques developed and used can be applied readily to other control systems requiring rapid intelligent decisions. Simulated modelling, used for theoretical studies, is implemented using a modified version of Kennedy Space Center's KATE (Knowledge-Based Automatic Test Equipment), FIES II windowing, and an ADEPT knowledge base. A load scheduler and a fault recovery system are currently under development to support both modes of operation.

Wang, Caroline

Using Ada to implement the operations management system in a community of experts

An architecture is described for the Space Station Operations Management System (OMS), consisting of a distributed expert system framework implemented in Ada. The motivation for such a scheme is based on the desire to integrate the very diverse elements of the OMS while taking maximum advantage of knowledge based systems technology. Part of the foundation of an Ada based distributed expert system was accomplished in the form of a proof of concept prototype for the KNOMES project (Knowledge-based Maintenance Expert System). This prototype successfully used concurrently active experts to accomplish monitoring and diagnosis for the Remote Manipulator System. The basic concept of this software architecture is named ACTORS for Ada Cognitive Task ORganization Scheme. It is when one considers the overall problem of integrating all of the OMS elements into a cooperative system that the AI solution stands out. By utilizing a distributed knowledge based system as the framework for OMS, it is possible to integrate those components which need to share information in an intelligent manner.

Frank, M. S.

Building intelligent systems: Artificial intelligence research at NASA Ames Research Center

The basic components that make up the goal of building autonomous intelligent systems are discussed, and ongoing work at the NASA Ames Research Center is described. It is noted that a clear progression of systems can be seen through research settings (both within and external to NASA) to Space Station testbeds to systems which actually fly on the Space Station. The starting point for the discussion is a truly autonomous Space Station intelligent system, responsible for a major portion of Space Station control. Attention is given to research in fiscal 1987, including reasoning under uncertainty, machine learning, causal modeling and simulation, knowledge from design through operations, advanced planning work, validation methodologies, and hierarchical control of and distributed cooperation among multiple knowledge-based systems.

Friedland, P.

A flexible telerobotic system for space operations

The objective and design of a proposed goal-oriented knowledge-based telerobotic system for space operations is described. This design effort encompasses the elements of the system executive and user interface and the distribution and general structure of the knowledge base, the displays, and the task sequencing. The objective of the design effort is to provide an expandable structure for a telerobotic system that provides cooperative interaction between the human operator and computer control. The initial phase of the implementation provides a rule-based, goal-oriented script generator to interface to the existing control modes of a telerobotic research system, in the Intelligent Systems Research Lab at NASA Research Center.

Sliwa, N. O.

Monitoring robot actions for error detection and recovery

Reliability is a serious problem in computer controlled robot systems. Although robots serve successfully in relatively simple applications such as painting and spot welding, their potential in areas such as automated assembly is hampered by programming problems. A program for assembling parts may be logically correct, execute correctly on a simulator, and even execute correctly on a robot most of the time, yet still fail unexpectedly in the face of real world uncertainties. Recovery from such errors is far more complicated than recovery from simple controller errors, since even expected errors can often manifest themselves in unexpected ways. Here, a novel approach is presented for improving robot reliability. Instead of anticipating errors, researchers use knowledge-based programming techniques so that the robot can autonomously exploit knowledge about its task and environment to detect and recover from failures. They describe preliminary experiment of a system that they designed and constructed.

Gini, M.

Real-time analysis of telemetry data

This paper descibes a knowledge-based system for performing real-time monitoring and analysis of telemetry data from the NASA Hubble Space Telescope (HST). In order to handle asynchronous inputs and perform in real time the system consists of three or more separate processes, which run concurrently and communicate via a message passing scheme. The data management process gathers, compresses, and scales the incoming telemetry data befoe sending it to the other tasks. The inferencing process uses the incoming data to perform a real-time analysis of the state and health of the Space Telescope. The I/O process receives telemetry monitors from the data management process, updates its graphical displays in real time, and acts as the interface to the console operator. The three processes may run on the same or different computers. This system is currently under development and is being used to monitor testcases produced by the Bass Telemetry System in the Hardware/Software Integration Facility at Lockheed Missile and Space Co. in Sunnyvale, California.

Kao, Simon A.

Deep-reasoning fault diagnosis - An aid and a model

The design and evaluation are presented for the knowledge-based assistance of a human operator who must diagnose a novel fault in a dynamic, physical system. A computer aid based on a qualitative model of the system was built to help the operators overcome some of their cognitive limitations. This aid differs from most expert systems in that it operates at several levels of interaction that are believed to be more suitable for deep reasoning. Four aiding approaches, each of which provided unique information to the operator, were evaluated. The aiding features were designed to help the human's casual reasoning about the system in predicting normal system behavior (N aiding), integrating observations into actual system behavior (O aiding), finding discrepancies between the two (O-N aiding), or finding discrepancies between observed behavior and hypothetical behavior (O-HN aiding). Human diagnostic performance was found to improve by almost a factor of two with O aiding and O-N aiding.

Yoon, Wan Chul