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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 19 records
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRS2005

Data Format Classification for Autonomous Software Defined Radios

We present maximum-likelihood (ML) coherent and noncoherent classifiers for discriminating between NRZ and Manchester coded (biphase-L) data formats for binary phase-shift-keying (BPSK) modulation. Such classification of the data format is an essential element of so-called autonomous software defined radio (SDR) receivers (similar to so-called cognitive SDR receivers in the military application) where it is desired that the receiver perform each of its functions by extracting the appropriate knowledge from the received signal and, if possible, with as little information of the other signal parameters as possible. Small and large SNR approximations to the ML classifiers are also proposed that lead to simpler implementation with comparable performance in their respective SNR regions. Numerical performance results obtained by a combination of computer simulation and, wherever possible, theoretical analyses, are presented and comparisons are made among the various configurations based on the probability of misclassification as a performance criterion. Extensions to other modulations such as QPSK are readily accomplished using the same methods described in the paper.

classification↗
NASA NTRS2004

NASA's Swarm Missions: The Challenge of Building Autonomous Software

The days of watching a massive manned cylinder thrust spectacularly off a platform into space might rapidly become ancient history when the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) introduces its new millenium mission class. Motivated by the need to gather more data than is possible with a single spacecraft, scientists have developed a new class of missions based on the efficiency and cooperative nature of a hive culture. The missions, aptly dubbed nanoswarm will be little more than mechanized colonies cooperating in their exploration of the solar system. Each swarm mission can have hundreds or even thousands of cooperating intelligent spacecraft that work in teams. The spacecraft must operate independently for long periods both in teams and individually, as well as have autonomic properties - self-healing, -configuring, -optimizing, and -protecting- to survive the harsh space environment. One swarm mission under concept development for 2020 to 2030 is the Autonomous Nano Technology Swarm (ANTS), in which a thousand picospacecraft, each weighing less than three pounds, will work cooperatively to explore the asteroid belt. Some spacecraft will form teams to catalog asteroid properties, such as mass, density, morphology, and chemical composition, using their respective miniature scientific instruments. Others will communicate with the data gatherers and send updates to mission elements on Earth. For software and systems development, this is uncharted territory that calls for revolutionary techniques.

Truszkowski, Walt↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Autonomous Robotic Manipulator Software

Autonomous robotic manipulation requires a deep and wide stack of supporting software. This paper presents Autonomous Robotic Manipulator Software (ARMS), a software suite designed at NASA Langley Research Center to support research and development of different algorithms for In-space Servicing, Assembly and Manufacturing (ISAM). ARMS solves common challenges along the autonomous manipulation software stack. Various challenges, such as integration with commercial hardware, simulation, and path planning, are solved through the use of Robot Operating System 2 and its community-developed packages. Other challenges, such as configuration management and task definition, and execution are solved in software built on those tools. The result is a modular approach to robotic system definition, agent actions, and assembly task definitions. ARMS has been used in two ISAM projects at NASA Langley Research Center, the Precision Assembled Space Structures project and the Built On-orbit Robotically assembled Gigatruss project.

Collin J Cresta↗
NASA NTRS2012

Autonomous Cryogenics Loading Operations Simulation Software: Knowledgebase Autonomous Test Engineer

The Simulation Software, KATE (Knowledgebase Autonomous Test Engineer), is used to demonstrate the automatic identification of faults in a system. The ACLO (Autonomous Cryogenics Loading Operation) project uses KATE to monitor and find faults in the loading of the cryogenics int o a vehicle fuel tank. The KATE software interfaces with the IHM (Integrated Health Management) systems bus to communicate with other systems that are part of ACLO. One system that KATE uses the IHM bus to communicate with is AIS (Advanced Inspection System). KATE will send messages to AIS when there is a detected anomaly. These messages include visual inspection of specific valves, pressure gauges and control messages to have AIS open or close manual valves. My goals include implementing the connection to the IHM bus within KATE and for the AIS project. I will also be working on implementing changes to KATE's Ul and implementing the physics objects in KATE that will model portions of the cryogenics loading operation.

Wehner, Walter S.↗
NASA NTRS2013

Autonomous Cryogenics Loading Operations Simulation Software: Knowledgebase Autonomous Test Engineer

Working on the ACLO (Autonomous Cryogenics Loading Operations) project I have had the opportunity to add functionality to the physics simulation software known as KATE (Knowledgebase Autonomous Test Engineer), create a new application allowing WYSIWYG (what-you-see-is-what-you-get) creation of KATE schematic files and begin a preliminary design and implementation of a new subsystem that will provide vision services on the IHM (Integrated Health Management) bus. The functionality I added to KATE over the past few months includes a dynamic visual representation of the fluid height in a pipe based on number of gallons of fluid in the pipe and implementing the IHM bus connection within KATE. I also fixed a broken feature in the system called the Browser Display, implemented many bug fixes and made changes to the GUI (Graphical User Interface).

Wehner, Walter S., Jr.↗
NASA NTRS2011

Implementation and Simulation Results using Autonomous Aerobraking Development Software

An Autonomous Aerobraking software system is currently under development with support from the NASA Engineering and Safety Center (NESC) that would move typically ground-based operations functions to onboard an aerobraking spacecraft, reducing mission risk and mission cost. The suite of software that will enable autonomous aerobraking is the Autonomous Aerobraking Development Software (AADS) and consists of an ephemeris model, onboard atmosphere estimator, temperature and loads prediction, and a maneuver calculation. The software calculates the maneuver time, magnitude and direction commands to maintain the spacecraft periapsis parameters within design structural load and/or thermal constraints. The AADS is currently tested in simulations at Mars, with plans to also evaluate feasibility and performance at Venus and Titan.

Maddock, Robert W.↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Autonomous Robotic Manipulator Software (ARMS)

Autonomous robotic manipulation requires a deep and wide stack of supporting software. This paper presents Autonomous Robotic Manipulator Software (ARMS), a software suite designed at NASA Langley Research Center to support research and development of different algorithms for In-space Servicing, Assembly and Manufacturing (ISAM). ARMS solves common challenges along the autonomous manipulation software stack. Various challenges, such as integration with commercial hardware, simulation, and path planning, are solved through the use of Robot Operating System 2 and its community-developed packages. Other challenges, such as configuration management and task definition, and execution are solved in software built on those tools. The result is a modular approach to robotic system definition, agent actions, and assembly task definitions. ARMS has been used in two ISAM projects at NASA Langley Research Center, the Precision Assembled Space Structures project and the Built On-orbit Robotically assembled Gigatruss project.

Collin J Cresta↗
NASA NTRS2006

Contingency Software in Autonomous Systems

This viewgraph presentation reviews the development of contingency software for autonomous systems. Autonomous vehicles currently have a limited capacity to diagnose and mitigate failures. There is a need to be able to handle a broader range of contingencies. The goals of the project are: 1. Speed up diagnosis and mitigation of anomalous situations.2.Automatically handle contingencies, not just failures.3.Enable projects to select a degree of autonomy consistent with their needs and to incrementally introduce more autonomy.4.Augment on-board fault protection with verified contingency scripts

autonomous systems↗
NASA NTRS2022

Reliability-Aware Requirements Development for Autonomy Software

Autonomy is the ability of a system to make decisions and take actions in the presence of uncertainty. Validating autonomy, therefore, is a matter of validating that the system makes intelligent decisions even when there might be discrepancies between the observed and the expected state of the world as well as when the possible outcome of each of the possible courses of action is uncertain. During the requirements engineering phase, the functions, including those that are required to be autonomous and their expected behavior are specified. However, in the case of autonomous software system, it is challenging to specify all possible scenarios that the software may encounter. Additionally, since autonomous behaviors cannot always be fully predetermined, it is difficult to reason about their completeness and correctness. While these challenges are also faced with non-autonomous system, they are more prevalent for autonomous system due to their complexity and emergent behavior. Our efforts have been three-fold. On one hand, we have developed a goal-based method for requirements decomposition. We have embedded this approach into a higher-level systems engineering framework and then developed methods for decision and reliability analysis within this framework. And finally, we use simulation analysis to validate the more theoretical methods and provide a feedback mechanism. The decision analysis approach (DA) helps in identifying and mitigating the run-time risks, by bringing to the forefront the uncertainties, decisions, interactions, and other factors that may cause autonomous software to make erroneous decisions. The DA framework is used to quantify, for each decision that the software can make, failure risk due to uncertainties. The information about the key decisions and circumstances that can cause autonomous system to make incorrect decisions are used to generate test scenarios to be run in a simulator to ensure that the system can handle error-prone circumstances. The results or outcomes from decisions, based on the simulated scenarios, can then be leveraged to further gain insight of the assured system. We combine a goal-based approach with simulation analysis to facilitate requirements development for autonomous systems and further provide a method for run-time systems level reliability considerations during the autonomous software development process. The DA and the reliability analysis methods provide a formalism for the consideration of uncertainty in the run time decision-making process for autonomous software. This formalism considers the uncertainty involved in the outcome of different courses of action, in terms of performance and cost, as well as a method to consider the system level reliability implications. System level reliability considerations for autonomous software decision making contribute to the satisfaction of the system level goals over the lifecycle of a given mission. We demonstrate our approach using a hypothetical rover path planning example. The requirements for our rover simulator are based on existing literature about Mars rovers and lessons learned from real world observations at JPL. The specifics of the autonomy design for the Mars rovers, that have not been previously cleared for external release, are not used for our demonstrations.

Lindvall, Mikael↗
NASA NTRS2000

Verification and Validation of Autonomy Software at NASA

Autonomous software holds the promise of new operation possibilities, easier design and development and lower operating costs. However, as those system close control loops and arbitrate resources on board with specialized reasoning, the range of possible situations becomes very large and uncontrollable from the outside, making conventional scenario-based testing very inefficient. Analytic verification and validation (V&V) techniques, and model checking in particular, can provide significant help for designing autonomous systems in a more efficient and reliable manner, by providing a better coverage and allowing early error detection. This article discusses the general issue of V&V of autonomy software, with an emphasis towards model-based autonomy, model-checking techniques and concrete experiments at NASA.

Pecheur, Charles↗
NASA NTRS2000

Verification and Validation of Autonomy Software at NASA

Autonomous software holds the promise of new operation possibilities, easier design and development, and lower operating costs. However, as those system close control loops and arbitrate resources on-board with specialized reasoning, the range of possible situations becomes very large and uncontrollable from the outside, making conventional scenario-based testing very inefficient. Analytic verification and validation (V&V) techniques, and model checking in particular, can provide significant help for designing autonomous systems in a more efficient and reliable manner, by providing a better coverage and allowing early error detection. This article discusses the general issue of V&V of autonomy software, with an emphasis towards model-based autonomy, model-checking techniques, and concrete experiments at NASA.

Pecheur, Charles↗
NASA NTRS2006

Contingency Software in Autonomous Systems: Technical Level Briefing

Contingency management is essential to the robust operation of complex systems such as spacecraft and Unpiloted Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). Automatic contingency handling allows a faster response to unsafe scenarios with reduced human intervention on low-cost and extended missions. Results, applied to the Autonomous Rotorcraft Project and Mars Science Lab, pave the way to more resilient autonomous systems.

autonomous systems↗
NASA NTRS2015

Physics Simulation Software for Autonomous Propellant Loading and Gas House Autonomous System Monitoring

1. Kennedy Space Center (KSC) is developing a mobile launching system with autonomous propellant loading capabilities for liquid-fueled rockets. An autonomous system will be responsible for monitoring and controlling the storage, loading and transferring of cryogenic propellants. The Physics Simulation Software will reproduce the sensor data seen during the delivery of cryogenic fluids including valve positions, pressures, temperatures and flow rates. The simulator will provide insight into the functionality of the propellant systems and demonstrate the effects of potential faults. This will provide verification of the communications protocols and the autonomous system control. 2. The High Pressure Gas Facility (HPGF) stores and distributes hydrogen, nitrogen, helium and high pressure air. The hydrogen and nitrogen are stored in cryogenic liquid state. The cryogenic fluids pose several hazards to operators and the storage and transfer equipment. Constant monitoring of pressures, temperatures and flow rates are required in order to maintain the safety of personnel and equipment during the handling and storage of these commodities. The Gas House Autonomous System Monitoring software will be responsible for constantly observing and recording sensor data, identifying and predicting faults and relaying hazard and operational information to the operators.

Regalado Reyes, Bjorn Constant↗
NASA NTRS2006

A Robust Compositional Architecture for Autonomous Systems

Space exploration applications can benefit greatly from autonomous systems. Great distances, limited communications and high costs make direct operations impossible while mandating operations reliability and efficiency beyond what traditional commanding can provide. Autonomous systems can improve reliability and enhance spacecraft capability significantly. However, there is reluctance to utilizing autonomous systems. In part this is due to general hesitation about new technologies, but a more tangible concern is that of reliability of predictability of autonomous software. In this paper, we describe ongoing work aimed at increasing robustness and predictability of autonomous software, with the ultimate goal of building trust in such systems. The work combines state-of-the-art technologies and capabilities in autonomous systems with advanced validation and synthesis techniques. The focus of this paper is on the autonomous system architecture that has been defined, and on how it enables the application of validation techniques for resulting autonomous systems.

Brat, Guillaume↗