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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 145 records · Page 8
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRS1990

An assessment of advanced displays and controls technology applicable to future space transportation systems

The topic of advanced display and control technology is addressed along with the major objectives of this technology, the current state of the art, major accomplishments, research programs and facilities, future trends, technology issues, space transportation systems applications and projected technology readiness for those applications. The holes that may exist between the technology needs of the transportation systems versus the research that is currently under way are addressed, and cultural changes that might facilitate the incorporation of these advanced technologies into future space transportation systems are recommended. Some of the objectives are to reduce life cycle costs, improve reliability and fault tolerance, use of standards for the incorporation of advancing technology, and reduction of weight, volume and power. Pilot workload can be reduced and the pilot's situational awareness can be improved, which would result in improved flight safety and operating efficiency. This could be accomplished through the use of integrated, electronic pictorial displays, consolidated controls, artificial intelligence, and human centered automation tools. The Orbiter Glass Cockpit Display is an example examined.

Hatfield, Jack J.↗
NASA NTRS1991

ISyCL technical report

The Air Force Integrated Information Systems Evolution Environment (IISEE) is a program focused on the development of technology for enabling the planning definition development and maintenance of evolutionary integrated information systems. This program has studied the representational needs of this knowledge base from the point of view of the needs of engineering, manufacturing, and logistics Evolutionary Information Systems (EIS). The definition of the concepts for a suite of automated tools and environments to support the pursuit of such engineering, manufacturing, and logistics EIS's has also required examination of languages and representation schemes for the knowledge base of these integrated systems. To accomplish this purpose, the language must be very rich, and must support object orientation, relational orientation, persistent storage, process transaction specification, and first order logic. The task of designing a unified language which supports these paradigms is a challenge. The Information Systems Constraint Language (ISyCL) is described. It was designed to meet the definitional and knowledge representation needs of three perspectives. It supports users from the area expert to the data base designer.

Decker, Louis P.↗
NASA NTRS1991

Analysis of methods

Information is one of an organization's most important assets. For this reason the development and maintenance of an integrated information system environment is one of the most important functions within a large organization. The Integrated Information Systems Evolution Environment (IISEE) project has as one of its primary goals a computerized solution to the difficulties involved in the development of integrated information systems. To develop such an environment a thorough understanding of the enterprise's information needs and requirements is of paramount importance. This document is the current release of the research performed by the Integrated Development Support Environment (IDSE) Research Team in support of the IISEE project. Research indicates that an integral part of any information system environment would be multiple modeling methods to support the management of the organization's information. Automated tool support for these methods is necessary to facilitate their use in an integrated environment. An integrated environment makes it necessary to maintain an integrated database which contains the different kinds of models developed under the various methodologies. In addition, to speed the process of development of models, a procedure or technique is needed to allow automatic translation from one methodology's representation to another while maintaining the integrity of both. The purpose for the analysis of the modeling methods included in this document is to examine these methods with the goal being to include them in an integrated development support environment. To accomplish this and to develop a method for allowing intra-methodology and inter-methodology model element reuse, a thorough understanding of multiple modeling methodologies is necessary. Currently the IDSE Research Team is investigating the family of Integrated Computer Aided Manufacturing (ICAM) DEFinition (IDEF) languages IDEF(0), IDEF(1), and IDEF(1x), as well as ENALIM, Entity Relationship, Data Flow Diagrams, and Structure Charts, for inclusion in an integrated development support environment.

Mayer, Richard J.↗
NASA NTRS1992

Automating sky object classification in astronomical survey images

We describe the application of machine classification techniques to the development of an automated tool for the reduction of a large scientific data set. The 2nd Palomer Observatory Sky Survey is nearly completed. This survey provides comprehensive coverage of the northern celestial hemisphere in the form of photographic plates. The plates are being transformed into digitized images whose quality will probably not be surpassed in the next ten to twenty years. The images are expected to contain on the order of 10(exp 7) galaxies and 10(exp 8) stars. Astronomers wish to determine which of these sky objects belong to various classes of galaxies and stars. The size of this data set precludes manual analysis. Our approach is to develop a software system which integrates the functions of independently developed techniques for image processing and data classification. Digitized sky images are passed through image processing routines to identify sky objects and to extract a set of features for each object. These routines are used to help select a useful set of attributes for classifying sky objects. Then GID3* and O-BTree, two inductive learning techniques, learn classification decision trees from examples. These classifiers will be used to process the rest of the data. This paper gives an overview of the machine learning techniques used, describes the details of our specific application, and reports the initial encouraging results. The results indicate that our approach is well-suited to the problem. The primary benefits of the approach are increased data reduction throughput and consistency of classification. The classification rules which are the product of the inductive learning techniques will form an object, examinable basis for classifying sky objects. A final, not to be underestimated benefit is that astronomers will be freed from the tedium of an intensely visual task to pursue more challenging analysis and interpretation problems based on automatically cataloged data.

Fayyad, Usama M.↗
NASA NTRS1993

The enhanced Software Life Cyle Support Environment (ProSLCSE): Automation for enterprise and process modeling

In this paper, we have introduced a comprehensive method for enterprise modeling that addresses the three important aspects of how an organization goes about its business. FirstEP includes infrastructure modeling, information modeling, and process modeling notations that are intended to be easy to learn and use. The notations stress the use of straightforward visual languages that are intuitive, syntactically simple, and semantically rich. ProSLCSE will be developed with automated tools and services to facilitate enterprise modeling and process enactment. In the spirit of FirstEP, ProSLCSE tools will also be seductively easy to use. Achieving fully managed, optimized software development and support processes will be long and arduous for most software organizations, and many serious problems will have to be solved along the way. ProSLCSE will provide the ability to document, communicate, and modify existing processes, which is the necessary first step.

Milligan, James R.↗
NASA NTRS1987

ASAP: An Ada static source code analyzer program

A user's manual is described and is provided for ASAP, an automated tool for static source code analysis of programs written in the Ada programming language. The purpose of the analysis is to collect and store information pertaining to the analyzed Ada compilation unit's size, complexity, usage of Ada language constructs and features, and static interface with other Ada compilation units.

Doubleday, Dennis Lee↗
NASA NTRS1991

VLSI synthesis of digital application specific neural networks

Neural networks tend to fall into two general categories: (1) software simulations, or (2) custom hardware that must be trained. The scope of this project is the merger of these two classifications into a system whereby a software model of a network is trained to perform a specific task and the results used to synthesize a standard cell realization of the network using automated tools.

Beagles, Grant↗
NASA NTRS1993

Object-oriented technologies in a multi-mission data system

The Operations Engineering Laboratory (OEL) at JPL is developing new technologies that can provide more efficient and productive ways of doing business in flight operations. Over the past three years, we have worked closely with the Multi-Mission Control Team to develop automation tools, providing technology transfer into operations and resulting in substantial cost savings and error reduction. The OEL development philosophy is characterized by object-oriented design, extensive reusability of code, and an iterative development model with active participation of the end users. Through our work, the benefits of object-oriented design became apparent for use in mission control data systems. Object-oriented technologies and how they can be used in a mission control center to improve efficiency and productivity are explained. The current research and development efforts in the JPL Operations Engineering Laboratory are also discussed to architect and prototype a new paradigm for mission control operations based on object-oriented concepts.

Murphy, Susan C.↗
NASA NTRS1993

Expert diagnostics system as a part of analysis software for power mission operations

The operation of interplanetary spacecraft at JPL has become an increasingly complex activity. This complexity is due to advanced spacecraft designs and ambitious mission objectives which lead to operations requirements that are more demanding than those of any previous mission. For this reason, several productivity enhancement measures are underway at JPL within mission operations, particularly in the spacecraft analysis area. These measures aimed at spacecraft analysis include: the development of a multi-mission, multi-subsystem operations environment; the introduction of automated tools into this environment; and the development of an expert diagnostics system. This paper discusses an effort to integrate the above mentioned productivity enhancement measures. A prototype was developed that integrates an expert diagnostics system into a multi-mission, multi-subsystem operations environment using the Galileo Power / Pyro Subsystem as a testbed. This prototype will be discussed in addition to background information associated with it.

Harris, Jennifer A.↗
NASA NTRS1994

Structural/aerodynamic Blade Analyzer (SAB) User's Guide, Version 1.0

The structural/aerodynamic blade (SAB) analyzer provides an automated tool for the static-deflection analysis of turbomachinery blades with aerodynamic and rotational loads. A structural code calculates a deflected blade shape using aerodynamic loads input. An aerodynamic solver computes aerodynamic loads using deflected blade shape input. The two programs are iterated automatically until deflections converge. Currently, SAB version 1.0 is interfaced with MSC/NASTRAN to perform the structural analysis and PROP3D to perform the aerodynamic analysis. This document serves as a guide for the operation of the SAB system with specific emphasis on its use at NASA Lewis Research Center (LeRC). This guide consists of six chapters: an introduction which gives a summary of SAB; SAB's methodology, component files, links, and interfaces; input/output file structure; setup and execution of the SAB files on the Cray computers; hints and tips to advise the user; and an example problem demonstrating the SAB process. In addition, four appendices are presented to define the different computer programs used within the SAB analyzer and describe the required input decks.

Morel, M. R.↗
NASA NTRS1993

Value added data archiving

Researchers in the Molecular Sciences Research Center (MSRC) of Pacific Northwest Laboratory (PNL) currently generate massive amounts of scientific data. The amount of data that will need to be managed by the turn of the century is expected to increase significantly. Automated tools that support the management, maintenance, and sharing of this data are minimal. Researchers typically manage their own data by physically moving datasets to and from long term storage devices and recording a dataset's historical information in a laboratory notebook. Even though it is not the most efficient use of resources, researchers have tolerated the process. The solution to this problem will evolve over the next three years in three phases. PNL plans to add sophistication to existing multilevel file system (MLFS) software by integrating it with an object database management system (ODBMS). The first phase in the evolution is currently underway. A prototype system of limited scale is being used to gather information that will feed into the next two phases. This paper describes the prototype system, identifies the successes and problems/complications experienced to date, and outlines PNL's long term goals and objectives in providing a permanent solution.

Berard, Peter R.↗
NASA NTRS1993

Automating test case generation for coverages required by FAA standard DO-178B

Coverage testing techniques are required by the FAA for various levels of subsystem criticality at the unit testing level. Higher levels of criticality require coverage schemes that frequently require more and more test cases, particularly when the number of conditions in a decision grows. For example, if we have a decision with n conditions of the form: if (/ci/ or /c2/ or .... or /cn/) then there are 2(n) possible combinations of condition outcomes. Given the enormous number of inputs that may be required to satisfy different coverages, and given that there are no automated tools for determining these inputs (to our knowledge), we will show how one alternative testing technique, mutation testing, can be coerced into generating inputs that satisfy a code coverage scheme X, i.e., if we modify the rules for mutant generation during mutation testing, this technique will provide test cases that satisfy X.

Voas, Jeffrey M.↗
NASA NTRS1993

SimTool - An object based approach to simulation construction

The creation and maintenance of large complex simulations can be a difficult and error prone task. A number of interactive and automated tools have been developed to aid in simulation construction and maintenance. Many of these tools are based upon object oriented analysis and design concepts. One such tool, SimTool, is an object based integrated tool set for the development, maintenance, and operation of large, complex and long lived simulations. This paper discusses SimTool's object based approach to simulation design, construction and execution. It also discusses the services provided to various levels of SimTool users to assist them in a wide range of simulation tasks. Also, with the aid of an implemented and working simulation example, this paper discusses SimTool's key design and operational features. Finally, this paper presents a condensed discussion of SimTool's Entity-Relationship-Attribute (ERA) modeling approach.

Crues, Edwin Z.↗
NASA NTRS1995

Descent advisor preliminary field test

A field test of the Descent Advisor (DA) automation tool was conducted at the Denver Air Route Traffic Control Center in September 1994. DA is being developed to assist Center controllers in the efficient management and control of arrival traffic. DA generates advisories, based on trajectory predictions, to achieve accurate meter-fix arrival times in a fuel efficient manner while assisting the controller with the prediction and resolution of potential conflicts. The test objectives were to evaluate the accuracy of DA trajectory predictions for conventional- and flight-management-system-equipped jet transports, to identify significant sources of trajectory prediction error, and to investigate procedural and training issues (both air and ground) associated with DA operations. Various commercial aircraft (97 flights total) and a Boeing 737-100 research aircraft participated in the test. Preliminary results from the primary test set of 24 commercial flights indicate a mean DA arrival time prediction error of 2.4 sec late with a standard deviation of 13.1 sec. This paper describes the field test and presents preliminary results for the commercial flights.

Green, Steven M.↗
NASA NTRS1994

Reengineering legacy software to object-oriented systems

NASA has a legacy of complex software systems that are becoming increasingly expensive to maintain. Reengineering is one approach to modemizing these systems. Object-oriented technology, other modem software engineering principles, and automated tools can be used to reengineer the systems and will help to keep maintenance costs of the modemized systems down. The Software Technology Branch at the NASA/Johnson Space Center has been developing and testing reengineering methods and tools for several years. The Software Technology Branch is currently providing training and consulting support to several large reengineering projects at JSC, including the Reusable Objects Software Environment (ROSE) project, which is reengineering the flight analysis and design system (over 2 million lines of FORTRAN code) into object-oriented C++. Many important lessons have been learned during the past years; one of these is that the design must never be allowed to diverge from the code during maintenance and enhancement. Future work on open, integrated environments to support reengineering is being actively planned.

Pitman, C.↗
NASA NTRS1995

Descent Advisor Preliminary Field Test

A field test of the Descent Advisor (DA) automation tool was conducted at the Denver Air Route Traffic Control Center in September 1994. DA is being developed to assist Center controllers in the efficient management and control of arrival traffic. DA generates advisories, based on trajectory predictions, to achieve accurate meter-fix arrival times in a fuel efficient manner while assisting the controller with the prediction and resolution of potential conflicts. The test objectives were: (1) to evaluate the accuracy of DA trajectory predictions for conventional and flight-management system equipped jet transports, (2) to identify significant sources of trajectory prediction error, and (3) to investigate procedural and training issues (both air and ground) associated with DA operations. Various commercial aircraft (97 flights total) and a Boeing 737-100 research aircraft participated in the test. Preliminary results from the primary test set of 24 commercial flights indicate a mean DA arrival time prediction error of 2.4 seconds late with a standard deviation of 13.1 seconds. This paper describes the field test and presents preliminary results for the commercial flights.

Green, Steven M.↗
NASA NTRS1999

Detecting Mode Confusion Through Formal Modeling and Analysis

Aircraft safety has improved steadily over the last few decades. While much of this improvement can be attributed to the introduction of advanced automation in the cockpit, the growing complexity of these systems also increases the potential for the pilots to become confused about what the automation is doing. This phenomenon, often referred to as mode confusion, has been involved in several accidents involving modern aircraft. This report describes an effort by Rockwell Collins and NASA Langley to identify potential sources of mode confusion through two complementary strategies. The first is to create a clear, executable model of the automation, connect it to a simulation of the flight deck, and use this combination to review of the behavior of the automation and the man-machine interface with the designers, pilots, and experts in human factors. The second strategy is to conduct mathematical analyses of the model by translating it into a formal specification suitable for analysis with automated tools. The approach is illustrated by applying it to a hypothetical, but still realistic, example of the mode logic of a Flight Guidance System.

Miller, Steven P.↗
NASA NTRS1999

A Methodology for Writing High Quality Requirement Specifications and for Evaluating Existing Ones

Requirements development and management have always been critical in the implementation of software systems-engineers are unable to build what analysts can not define. It is generally accepted that the earlier in the life cycle potential risks are identified the easier it is to eliminate or manage the conditions that introduce that risk. Problems that are not found until testing are approximately 14 times more costly to fix than if the problem was found in the requirement phase. The requirements specification, as the first tangible representation of the capability to be produced, establishes the basis for all of the project's engineering management and assurance functions. If the quality of the requirements specification is poor it can give rise to risks in all areas of the project. Recently, automated tools have become available to support requirements management. The use of these tools not only provides support in the definition and tracing of requirements, but it also opens the door to effective use of metrics in characterizing and assessing the quality of the requirement specifications.

Rosenberg, Linda↗