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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 NTRS2009

Human Factors Issues in the Design of Super-Dense Operations Airspace

A knowledge acquisition study was completed focusing on two questions: 1. What is a concept of operation for the design and use of Super-Dense Operations (SDO) airspace within the next 10 years? 2. What are the human factors issues that need to be addressed in order to enable this concept of operation? To address these questions, a series of structured interviews were conducted with four FAA specialists with significant experience as controllers, traffic managers and airspace designers and with one experienced commercial pilot. The operational concept developed based on the expertise of these individuals has similarities to proposals under the FAA's "Big Airspace" project, making heavy use of advanced Area navigation (RNAV) routes, but goes beyond the current state of that concept by making explicit a number of foundational assumptions, and by proposing a system design to deal with convective weather.

Smith, P.J.↗
NASA NTRS2010

A Simulation-Based Approach to Training Operational Cultural Competence

Cultural knowledge and skills are critically important for military operations, emergency response, or any job that involves interaction with a culturally diverse population. However, it is not obvious what cultural knowledge and skills need to be trained, and how to integrate that training with the other training that trainees must undergo. Cultural training needs to be broad enough to encompass both regional (culture-specific) and cross-cultural (culture-general) competencies, yet be focused enough to result in targeted improvements in on-the-job performance. This paper describes a comprehensive instructional development methodology and training technology framework that focuses cultural training on operational needs. It supports knowledge acquisition, skill acquisition, and skill transfer. It supports both training and assessment, and integrates with other aspects of operational skills training. Two training systems will be used to illustrate this approach: the Virtual Cultural Awareness Trainer (VCAT) and the Tactical Dari language and culture training system. The paper also discusses new and emerging capabilities that are integrating cultural competence training more strongly with other aspects of training and mission rehearsal.

Johnson, W. Lewis↗
NASA NTRS2008

MER Surface Phase; Blurring the Line Between Fault Protection and What is Supposed to Happen

An assessment on the limitations of communication with MER rovers and how such constraints drove the system design, flight software and fault protection architecture, blurring the line between traditional fault protection and expected nominal behavior, and requiring the most novel autonomous and semi-autonomous elements of the vehicle software including communication, surface mobility, attitude knowledge acquisition, fault protection, and the activity arbitration service.

surface operations↗
NASA NTRS2016

Functional Fault Model Development Process to Support Design Analysis and Operational Assessment

A functional fault model (FFM) is an abstract representation of the failure space of a given system. As such, it simulates the propagation of failure effects along paths between the origin of the system failure modes and points within the system capable of observing the failure effects. As a result, FFMs may be used to diagnose the presence of failures in the modeled system. FFMs necessarily contain a significant amount of information about the design, operations, and failure modes and effects. One of the important benefits of FFMs is that they may be qualitative, rather than quantitative and, as a result, may be implemented early in the design process when there is more potential to positively impact the system design. FFMs may therefore be developed and matured throughout the monitored system's design process and may subsequently be used to provide real-time diagnostic assessments that support system operations. This paper provides an overview of a generalized NASA process that is being used to develop and apply FFMs. FFM technology has been evolving for more than 25 years. The FFM development process presented in this paper was refined during NASA's Ares I, Space Launch System, and Ground Systems Development and Operations programs (i.e., from about 2007 to the present). Process refinement took place as new modeling, analysis, and verification tools were created to enhance FFM capabilities. In this paper, standard elements of a model development process (i.e., knowledge acquisition, conceptual design, implementation & verification, and application) are described within the context of FFMs. Further, newer tools and analytical capabilities that may benefit the broader systems engineering process are identified and briefly described. The discussion is intended as a high-level guide for future FFM modelers.

Verification↗
NASA NTRS2018

Cognitive Anti-Jamming Satellite-To-Ground Communications on NASA's SCaN Testbed

Machine learning aided cognitive anti-jamming communications is designed, developed and demonstrated on a live satellite-to-ground link. A wideband autonomous cognitive radio (WACR) is designed and implemented as a hardware-in-the- loop (HITL) prototype. The cognitive engine (CE) of the WACR is implemented on a PC while the software-defined radio (SDR) platform utilized two different radios for spectrum sensing and actual communications. The cognitive engine performs spectrum knowledge acquisition over the complete spectrum range available for the SATCOM system operation and learns an anti-jamming communications protocol to avoid both intentional jammers and inadvertent interferers using reinforcement learning. When the current satellite-to-ground link is jammed, the cognitive engine of the ground receiver directs the satellite transmitter to switch to a new channel that is predicted to be jammer-free for the longest possible duration. The end-to-end, closed-loop system was tested on the NASA Space Communications and Navigation (SCaN) Testbed on the International Space Station (ISS). The experimental results demonstrated the feasibility of satellite-to-ground cognitive anti-jamming communications along with excellent anti-jamming capability of machine learning aided cognitive protocols against several different types of jammers.

Jayaweera, Sudharman K.↗
NASA NTRS2018

Cognitive Anti-jamming Satellite-to-Ground Communications on NASA's SCaN Testbed

Machine learning aided cognitive anti-jamming communications is designed, developed and demonstrated on an experimental satellite-to-ground link. A wideband autonomous cognitive radio (WACR) is designed and implemented as a hardware-in the-loop (HITL) prototype. The cognitive engine (CE) of the WACR is implemented on a PC while the software-defined radio (SDR) platform utilized two different radios for spectrum sensing and actual communications. The cognitive engine performs spectrum knowledge acquisition over the complete spectrum range available for the SATCOM system operation and learns an anti-jamming communications protocol to avoid both intentional jammers and inadvertent interferers using reinforcement learning. When the current satellite-to-ground link is jammed, the cognitive engine of the ground receiver directs the satellite transmitter to switch to a new channel that is predicted to be jammer-free for the longest possible duration. The end-to-end, closed-loop system was tested with the NASA's Space Communications and Networking (SCaN) testbed on the International Space Station (ISS). The experimental results demonstrated the feasibility of satellite-to-ground cognitive anti-jamming communications along with excellent anti-jamming capability of machine-learning aided cognitive protocols against several different types of jammers.

Jayaweera, Sudharman K.↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Lunar Science and Mission Systems Integration for Real-Time Long Duration Remote Robot Surface Operations

Conducting lunar science with a robot on the Moon that is commanded in real-time from Earth by distributed workgroups for long durations is a specific activity that has been developed by many projects including NASA’s Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover (VIPER) mission. VIPER’s nominal mission period for surface operations was set for 100 Earth days (four lunar days). VIPER’s science knowledge acquisition was set to focus on characterizing the distribution of water and volatiles across a range of thermal environments, within a traverse planned to optimize science return across up to 20 km. While VIPER’s status is the subject of discussion, there is research and analysis from the development and simulations phases that are of benefit to the lunar science community and future remote science operations projects. Discussed here are some findings on the process of integrating lunar science with mission system operations.

VIPER↗
NASA NTRS1990

Fifth Conference on Artificial Intelligence for Space Applications

The Fifth Conference on Artificial Intelligence for Space Applications brings together diverse technical and scientific work in order to help those who employ AI methods in space applications to identify common goals and to address issues of general interest in the AI community. Topics include the following: automation for Space Station; intelligent control, testing, and fault diagnosis; robotics and vision; planning and scheduling; simulation, modeling, and tutoring; development tools and automatic programming; knowledge representation and acquisition; and knowledge base/data base integration.

Odell, Steve L.↗
NASA NTRS1993

Autonomously acquiring declarative and procedural knowledge for ICAT systems

The construction of Intelligent Computer Aided Training (ICAT) systems is critically dependent on the ability to define and encode knowledge. This knowledge engineering effort can be broadly divided into two categories: domain knowledge and expert or task knowledge. Domain knowledge refers to the physical environment or system with which the expert interacts. Expert knowledge consists of the set of procedures and heuristics employed by the expert in performing their task. Both these areas are a significant bottleneck in the acquisition of knowledge for ICAT systems. This paper presents a research project in the area of autonomous knowledge acquisition using a passive observation concept. The system observes an expert and then generalizes the observations into production rules representing the domain expert's knowledge.

Kovarik, Vincent J., Jr.↗
DOE OSTI2020

Noise-Based Selection of Robust Inherited Model for Accurate Continual Learning

There is a growing demand for an intelligent system to continually learn knowledge from a data stream. Continual learning requires both the preservation of previous knowledge (i.e., avoiding catastrophic forgetting) and the acquisition of new knowledge. Different from previous works that focus only on model adaptation (e.g., regularization, network expansion, memory rehearsal, etc.), we propose a novel training scheme named acquisitive learning (AL), which emphasizes both the knowledge inheritance and knowledge acquisition. AL starts from an elaborately selected model with pre-trained knowledge (the inherited model) and then adapts it to new data using segmented training. The selection is achieved by injecting random noise to various inherited models for better model robustness, which promises higher accuracy in further knowledge acquisition. The approach is validated by the visualization of the loss landscape and quantitative roughness measurement. The combination of the selective inherited model and knowledge acquisition reduces catastrophic forgetting by 10X on the CIFAR-100 dataset.

Du, Xiaocong↗
NASA NTRS1989

Advanced Software Development Workstation Project

The Advanced Software Development Workstation Project, funded by Johnson Space Center, is investigating knowledge-based techniques for software reuse in NASA software development projects. Two prototypes have been demonstrated and a third is now in development. The approach is to build a foundation that provides passive reuse support, add a layer that uses domain-independent programming knowledge, add a layer that supports the acquisition of domain-specific programming knowledge to provide active support, and enhance maintainability and modifiability through an object-oriented approach. The development of new application software would use specification-by-reformulation, based on a cognitive theory of retrieval from very long-term memory in humans, and using an Ada code library and an object base. Current tasks include enhancements to the knowledge representation of Ada packages and abstract data types, extensions to support Ada package instantiation knowledge acquisition, integration with Ada compilers and relational databases, enhancements to the graphical user interface, and demonstration of the system with a NASA contractor-developed trajectory simulation package. Future work will focus on investigating issues involving scale-up and integration.

Lee, Daniel↗
NASA NTRS1991

Acquisition, representation and rule generation for procedural knowledge

Current research into the design and continuing development of a system for the acquisition of procedural knowledge, its representation in useful forms, and proposed methods for automated C Language Integrated Production System (CLIPS) rule generation is discussed. The Task Analysis and Rule Generation Tool (TARGET) is intended to permit experts, individually or collectively, to visually describe and refine procedural tasks. The system is designed to represent the acquired knowledge in the form of graphical objects with the capacity for generating production rules in CLIPS. The generated rules can then be integrated into applications such as NASA's Intelligent Computer Aided Training (ICAT) architecture. Also described are proposed methods for use in translating the graphical and intermediate knowledge representations into CLIPS rules.

Ortiz, Chris↗
NASA NTRS2001

The Acquisition Process as a Vehicle for Enabling Knowledge Management in the Lifecycle of Complex Federal Systems

This white paper explores how to increase the success and operation of critical, complex, national systems by effectively capturing knowledge management requirements within the federal acquisition process. Although we focus on aerospace flight systems, the principles outlined within may have a general applicability to other critical federal systems as well. Fundamental design deficiencies in federal, mission-critical systems have contributed to recent, highly visible system failures, such as the V-22 Osprey and the Delta rocket family. These failures indicate that the current mechanisms for knowledge management and risk management are inadequate to meet the challenges imposed by the rising complexity of critical systems. Failures of aerospace system operations and vehicles may have been prevented or lessened through utilization of better knowledge management and information management techniques.

Stewart, Helen↗
NASA NTRS1991

Report of the panel on geopotential fields: Gravity field, section 8

The objective of the Geopotential Panel was to develop a program of data acquisition and model development for the Earth's gravity and magnetic fields that meet the basic science requirements of the solid Earth and ocean studies. Presented here are the requirements for gravity information and models through the end of the century, the present status of our knowledge, data acquisition techniques, and an outline of a program to meet the requirements.

Anderson, Allen Joel↗
NASA NTRS2006

Efficient Agent-Based Cluster Ensembles

Numerous domains ranging from distributed data acquisition to knowledge reuse need to solve the cluster ensemble problem of combining multiple clusterings into a single unified clustering. Unfortunately current non-agent-based cluster combining methods do not work in a distributed environment, are not robust to corrupted clusterings and require centralized access to all original clusterings. Overcoming these issues will allow cluster ensembles to be used in fundamentally distributed and failure-prone domains such as data acquisition from satellite constellations, in addition to domains demanding confidentiality such as combining clusterings of user profiles. This paper proposes an efficient, distributed, agent-based clustering ensemble method that addresses these issues. In this approach each agent is assigned a small subset of the data and votes on which final cluster its data points should belong to. The final clustering is then evaluated by a global utility, computed in a distributed way. This clustering is also evaluated using an agent-specific utility that is shown to be easier for the agents to maximize. Results show that agents using the agent-specific utility can achieve better performance than traditional non-agent based methods and are effective even when up to 50% of the agents fail.

Agogino, Adrian↗
DOE OSTI2021

Autonomous Acoustic Receiver System for 3D Tracking and Monitoring Real-Time Fish Survival (CRADA 448)

Develop technologies that reduce the delay between changing hydropower operations and the acquisition of knowledge regarding fish behavior and survival and to reduce the cost and effort to obtain behavioral information of fish that is both accurate and detailed. The technologies being proposed would allow hydropower operators to quickly understand the impact of operational changes on fish and allow fisheries researchers to study fish behavior in high resolution at locations that previously would have been unfeasible.

13 HYDRO ENERGY↗
NASA NTRS1991

Fourth Annual Workshop on Space Operations Applications and Research (SOAR 90)

The papers presented at the Space Operations, Applications and Research (SOAR) Symposium, hosted by the Air Force Space Technology Center and held at Albuquerque, New Mexico, on June 26-28, 1990, are documented in these proceedings. Over 150 technical papers were presented at the Symposium, which was jointly sponsored by the Air Force and NASA Johnson Space Center. the technical areas included were: Automation and Robotics, Environmental Interactions, Human Factors, Intelligent Systems, and Life Sciences. NASA and Air Force programmatic overviews and panel sessions were also held in each technical area. These proceedings, along with the comments by technical area coordinators and session chairmen, will be used by the Space Operation Technology Subcommittee (SOTS) of the Air Force Systems Command and NASA Space Technology Interdependency Group (STIG) to assess the status of the technology, as well as the joint projects/activities in various technical areas. The Symposium proceedings include papers presented by experts from NASA, the Air Force, universities, and industries in various disciplines.

Life Sciences↗
NASA NTRS1991

Passive acquisition of CLIPS rules

The automated acquisition of knowledge by machine has not lived up to expectations, and knowledge engineering remains a human intensive task. Part of the reason for the lack of success is the difference in the cognitive focus of the expert. The expert must shift his or her focus from the subject domain to that of the representation environment. In doing so this cognitive shift introduces opportunity for errors and omissions. Presented here is work that observes the expert interact with a simulation of the domain. The system logs changes in the simulation objects and the expert's actions in response to those changes. This is followed by the application of inductive reasoning to move the domain specific rules observed to general domain rules.

Kovarik, Vincent J., Jr.↗