OCTOBER 2005:
NASA Quest Webcast:
Bill Clancey (Code TI) and Jennifer Heldmann (Code SS) appeared with Lassen National Park ranger Steve Zachary in a "Living and Working on Mars" NASA Quest Challenge webcast on Oct. 12, 2005, available to more than 2,250 registered students (grades 5-8) in 25 U.S. states and six other countries. Heldmann is deploying weather instruments at Lassen to study environmental physics of the snowpack as it affects the growth patterns of red snow algae. Clancey documented the 3.5-hour task as a simulated Mars operation for later study. In the webcast, he explained how such fieldwork studies can improve design of space habitation, surface transport, social aspects of long-duration space missions, and field support by robots. He also described how Ames' Mobile Agents computing and communications architecture could support such field activities. [POC: Bill Clancey, ARC/TI.]
Subvocal Speech Milestone:
Chuck Jorgensen's real-time subvocal speech project achieved a primary FY05 research milestone on Aug. 29, with better than 70% average recognition in a generalization test set containing 15 different words. The development goal is a new computer interfacing modality for immersed human/machine systems, capable of delivering hands-free, noise-immune communication under mission conditions where acoustic communications are difficult. Subvocal speech has also drawn interest from emergency response communities. Jorgensen presented an invited address to 20 fire chiefs -- including the District Heads of both the Colorado and Kentucky fire departments -- at the annual meeting of the Int'l Assoc. of Fire Chiefs. Representatives of both the Department of Defense and Department of Homeland Security have requested additional information about the technology. Jorgensen and Brad Betts also demonstrated the system on August 30 for NHK, the largest television network in Japan. Takashi Tachibana, one of Japan's most prominent science writers and investigative journalists, took part in the filming and interview. [POC: Chuck Jorgensen, ARC/TI. NASA ARC, Dominic Hart.]
New Mission Control Technologies:
Distributed ground data systems and mission operation systems will require custom user interfaces supported by an interoperable communication framework. The Mission Control Technologies (MCT) project at Ames demonstrated such an MCT system -- developed in collaboration with JPL's Deep Space Mission Systems Accountability service -- at JPL on Sep. 29, 2005. The pilot system offers as-needed customization for different types of users, without code modifications or the need for new test-and-release cycles. The demonstration included a scenario-driven dynamic user interface for tracking data through the system. This builds on the SISM-funded MERBoard and Collaborative Information Portal (CIP) technologies, adding a component-based user interface and other modular, evolvable software technologies for distributed collaborative systems. [POC: Jay Trimble, ARC/TI.]
Mobile Agents in DesertRATS 05:
Researchers from Ames participated in the two-week 2005 Desert Research and Technology Studies (DesertRATS 05) system integration and field test at Meteor Crater South Rim and West Flank (near Flagstaff, AZ), Sep. 5-16, 2005. The goal was to test two planetary space suits -- the first such exercise since Apollo tests -- and a robot vehicle capable of carrying suited subjects. The suited subjects also collected geological and biological samples. Ames provided EVITA (EVA Intelligent Talking Assistant) and Mobile Agent voice commanding of the "Boudreaux" EVA Robotic Assistant (ERA), which could follow a suited subject or go to a named location and take a panoramic picture. Teams also used speech control of head-mounted displays to locate worksites on satellite images and dynamically stitched TerraServer maps (with GPS position and "bread crumb" markings). The dialog system provided verbal information on the direction and distance to the next waypoint and logged place names, photo and sample locations, and voice notes into a ScienceOrganizer database. It also handled team tracking and work flow management. All spoken and video communications were mirrored to a communications habitat. Ames participants included the Spoken Dialogue Systems Group, Work Systems Design and Evaluation Group, Intelligent Mobile Technologies, and Semantic Technologies Applied Research Team (START). JSC's Advanced Suit Laboratory led DesertRATS05; other participants were the JSC Crew office, JSC ExPOC, JSC Scout Robots, JSC-Glenn Digital Learning Network, and Glenn Communication and Avionics Group. The exercise ended with an educational outreach program to 450 elementary, middle, and high school students at the Meteor Crater Visitor Center. See the SpaceRef.com report for more about the field trial. [POC: Bill Clancey, ARC/TI.]
SEPTEMBER 2005:
Ames Intelligent Robot Demonstration:
NASA Ames will conduct a "Marscape" mobile agents demonstration on Oct. 3, 2005 -- 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. PDT -- open to the press. Two prototype space robots -- K9 and Gromit -- will interact with humans simulating a field geology mission on Mars. K9 is Ames' advanced rover prototype, and Gromit is an RWI (Real World Interface) ATRV Junior all-terrain robot vehicle. Next-generation planning/execution software gives the vehicles sophisticated reasoning abilities, including obstacle avoidance and autonomous navigation through initially unknown rough terrain (while monitoring events along the way). Researchers playing the role of astronauts will use voice-commanded software agents and a distributed communication system to direct and coordinate robot activities. The personal agent software will also support spoken interactions with automated databases and systems, providing Apollo-style "CapCom" information and coordination services (e.g., tracking the astronauts' activities, vital signs, and deviations from stated plans). Human-robot teams will move between sample sites, gather and log rock samples, take pictures, and store voice notes. The robots will also carry out autonomous missions to investigate targets of interest. Reporters will be able to interview the NASA researchers about the artificial intelligence that may help robots and human beings work together on the Moon, on Mars, and on Earth. See http://www.nasa.gov/centers/ames/multimedia/images/2005/K9.html and http://amesnews.arc.nasa.gov/releases/2004/mobile_agents/mobile_agents.html for images of the robots. [POC: Bill Clancey, ARC/TI.]
Mars Society Presentation by Clancey:
Bill Clancey gave an invited plenary presentation at the 8th annual International Mars Society Convention, held in Boulder, CO, August 11-14, 2005. His talk on "The Mobile Agents 2005 Field Test: Planning for Exploration" described the current Mobile Agents Architecture configuration of more than 60 agents, including six voice-commanded robots (JSC's Boudreaux, Thibodeaux, and Scout, and Ames' PER, Gromit, and K9). The Mobile Agents communications architecture integrates six levels of hardware and software, down to differing interaction protocols for specific astronaut activities. It automates device control, data flow, and work processes among crew, systems, and robots, including alerting and advising for navigation, scheduling, life support, and astronaut health. Rotation 38 at the Mars Society's Desert Research Station (MDRS, April 2-17) was completely dedicated to a field test of the system. Over 300 people attended the conference, which covered all human and technological aspects of Mars exploration. Clancey was followed by Chris Shank, special assistant to NASA Administrator Mike Griffin, who spoke on "NASA -- The Future and the Vision." [POC: Bill Clancey, ARC/TI.]
AUGUST 2005:
Clarissa Wins SpeechTEK Big Bang Award:
NASA and Nuance Communications, Inc. were awarded Speech Technology Magazine's prestigious Big Bang Speech Solutions Award -- for the most impactful speech deployment in the past 12 months -- at the 11th annual SpeechTEK Exposition and Educational Conference. The award was for the Clarissa Procedure Navigator, a fully voice-operated procedure browser that will enable astronauts to be more efficient with their hands and eyes as they execute scripted procedures. Clarissa has a vocabulary of about 260 words and supports about 75 commands, including reading steps, scrolling forwards or backwards in the procedure, moving to an arbitrary new step, reviewing non-current steps, adding or removing voice notes, displaying pictures, and setting alarms or timers. The software was first tested in space by Expedition 11 Science Officer and Flight Engineer John Phillips on June 27, 2005. Future applications may include life support maintenance (such as ISS water testing procedures), medical exams, science experiments, and space suit check-out. Clarissa was developed with the support of astronauts, training personnel, and procedure owners at JSC, and received crucial support for its Station Development Test Objective (SDTO) approval and use from the Mission Operations Directorate (MOD) and several JSC approval boards. [POC: Beth Ann Hockey, UCSC/ARC.]
Subvocal Speech is Saatchi Finalist:
Ames researcher Chuck Jorgensen has been selected as a finalist for the biennial 2005 Saatchi & Saatchi Award for World Changing Ideas -- and its $100,000 prize -- for his work on subvocal speech recognition. Subvocal technology uses electromyographic (EMG) signals that the brain sends to the tongue and vocal cords, without requiring actual speech. This can be picked up even in noisy environments, and is particularly suited to flight operations, underwater communication, instrument and computer commanding (even in the presence of fan noise), and wheelchair control. The technology is being developed under NASA's Extension of the Human Senses Program. Previous finalists have included a tornado early-warning system, a sonar system for the visually impaired, a tactile sensor, and viable electric lighting for the developing world. Former judging panel members from NASA have included Astronauts Buzz Aldrin and Story Musgrave. [POC: Chuck Jorgensen, ARC/TI. NASA ARC, Dominic Hart.]
NASA Quest Challenge Support:
Bill Clancey of Ames' Work Systems Design and Evaluation Group is helping Liza Coe and the Ames Education Technology Team (Code HN) implement a "Living and Working on Mars" NASA Quest Challenge. This year's challenge -- the first using field observations with collaborating NASA scientists -- will study red snowpack algae at Lassen National Park, led by Jennifer Heldman of Code SS. Instruments will be deployed to study environmental physics of the snowpack and its algae growth. Students in grades 5-8 will suggest systems that could support such a study on Mars. Clancey showed a campfire video to over 200 park visitors (on July 28-29) explaining how such exploration might be supported by the Mobile Agents computing and communications system. He will also advise the project on pragmatic issues such as habitation, surface transport, social aspects of long-duration space missions, and robotic field support, and will contribute to Web-based documentation of the field work. Students will then interact with a panel of scientists in a culminating webcast. [POC: Bill Clancey, ARC/TI. Digital Space, Inc.]
JUNE 2005:
Voice Recognition Tested in Space:
Clarissa, a voice-enabled procedure browser developed at NASA Ames, was successfully tested by astronaut John Phillips on board the International Space Station, on June 27, 2005. Clarissa Project leader Beth Ann Hockey believes this is the first-ever use of a spoken dialogue system in space. The software accepts 75 commands for navigating checklists, based on a vocabulary of 260 words. Recent work by Xerox Research Centre Europe in Grenoble, France, helped reduce false command recognition from background conversations. Astronaut Phillips exercised all of Clarissa's main functions while testing station water for bacteria. Speech recognition and dialogue management both functioned well. This ISS test of Clarissa is described in a non-technical New Scientist article at http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7584. For more information, including online conference papers and technical reports, see the Clarissa home page at http://www.ic.arc.nasa.gov/projects/clarissa/. [POC: Beth Ann Hockey, UCSC/ARC.]
Improvements in Distributed Collaboration:
Crew time and attention are scarce and costly resources. Software "liaison agents" can reduce workload safely during joint human-automation procedures, automating routine tasks and eliminating interruptions, distractions, and sources of error. Debbie Schreckenghost (Metrica) has been building such an information/communication system within JSC's Distributed Collaboration and Interaction (DCI) agent environment. Last year's Water Research Facility (WRF) ground tests -- supporting Water Recovery System (WRS) control engineers and a hardware engineer -- reduced anomaly detection time to a few minutes, with response time usually under one hour. DCI startup time was reduced from 25 minutes to just five minutes, and average time between DCI restarts was increased from four days in early 2004 to eleven days by Jan. 2005. This approach to adjustable autonomy builds up from fully manual systems, rather than down from full autonomy. Maintaining operational context when the agent is only occasionally in control is one of the research challenges. Recent papers have been accepted by the AIAA 1st Space Exploration Conf. (Jan. 2005); AAAI Spring Symp. Workshop on Persistent Assistants (Mar. 2005); Int'l Conf. on Environmental Systems (July 2005); and 8th Int'l Symp. on Artificial Intelligence, Robotics and Automation in Space (Sep. 2005). [POC: Debbie Schreckenghost, Metrica/JSC.]
Procedure Learning Study:
Training methods can influence astronaut or pilot success in learning procedures and generalizing to flexible skills for novel circumstances. Experienced users often find shortcuts to well-practiced procedures, and are often able to repair errors made during execution. John Anderson of CMU is modeling human performance of standard procedures in a Boeing 777 Flight Management System simulation, including prediction and analysis of shortcuts and repairs. A key question is whether extended instructions based on pre- and postconditions -- "If X then Y, to accomplish Z" -- are more effective than standard procedural check lists. An initial experiment showed fewer errors after learning extended instructions, especially on tasks requiring extrapolation. Investigators will use both the ACT-R cognitive architecture and Freed's Apex cognitive modeling system to model this learning, down to the level of eye movements and motor responses, for use in automated evaluation of training materials. An article on this by N.A. Taatgen will be published in Cognitive Science. [POC: John Anderson, CMU.]
Human-Robot Performance Prediction:
Automated modeling and planning for human-robot teams requires a language for representing both human and robotic activities. Alonso Vera has done this with a Human Activity Dictionary (HAD) related to MER '03 rover performance parameters. Vera has also developed and user-tested the Expert-Performance Research Toolkit (X-PRT), an interface that supports modeling with the HCI Group's Constraint-based Optimal Reasoning Engine (CORE). SISM funding of this work will help predict human performance at monitoring and control tasks, guiding interface design for optimal speed or accuracy. CORE includes libraries of constraints derived from twenty years of research in human-computer interaction. With X-PRT, it will enable fast, easy model building and innovative visualization of time courses. Vera's team received a Best Paper of the Year nomination at CHI 2005, and has two accepted papers at CogSci 2005 (on "Architectural Building Blocks as the Locus of Adaptive Behavior Selection" and "Information-Requirements Grammar: A Theory of the Structure of Competence for Interaction"). [POC: Alonso Vera, ARC/THI.]
Oscillatory Hierarchy for Attention:
Kevin Knuth and PI Len Trejo have been studying attentional aspects of brain response to stimuli, to monitor pilot/astronaut attentional states and create more effective brain-computer interfaces. For this, Knuth developed a suite of source-separation algorithms for characterizing oscillatory bursts in EEG data. Work with NIH/NLM-funded collaborators has shown that attention modulates oscillatory activity in a hierarchical manner, driving gamma oscillations (above 30 Hz) at a particular phase of theta oscillations (4-8 Hz) and delta oscillations (0.1-3 Hz). Stimulus-related response amplitude is modulated by the pre-stimulus delta rhythm phase at which a thalamocortical input arrives. Thus there is both an "ideal" and a "worst" delta phase, with high-amplitude theta and gamma oscillations signaling increased cortical responsiveness. This work has been accepted for publication in the Journal of Neurophysiology. Collaborators include Peter Lakatos and Charles Schroeder (Nathan Kline Institute), Ankoor Shah (Albert Einstein College of Medicine), and Istvan Ulbert and George Karmos (Budapest Institute for Psychology). [POC: Kevin Knuth, ARC/TI.]
MAY 2005:
Award Nomination for Subvocal Speech:
Subvocal technology directly taps electromyographic (EMG) signals produced by larynx and tongue muscles as words are pronounced or silently mouthed, hence is immune to noise and many common impediments to vocal speech. Users might include astronauts (suited or in the presence of fan noise), firefighter and disaster assistance response team (DART) members operating in high noise and/or pressurized suit environments, SCUBA divers (e.g., for training in the Neutral Buoyancy Facility at JSC), operations management personnel, and injured or disabled people. This technology -- developed under NASA's Extension of the Human Senses Program -- has been nominated for the biennial 2005 Saatchi & Saatchi Communications Award for World Changing Ideas (London, UK), which carries a $100,000 prize. The winner will be determined by an international panel of scientific, linguistic, artistic, and technological experts, and announced after June 2005. Former NASA panel members have included Astronauts Buzz Aldrin and Story Musgrave. [POC: Chuck Jorgensen, ARC/TI. NASA ARC, Dominic Hart.]
Human-Robot Interactions Field Test:
The Mobile Agent architecture and collaborative engineering methodology (based on Brahms) provides a flexible toolkit for configuring extravehicular activity (EVA) components, visualizing and formalizing EVA plans, and automating key supervisory functions. The Mars Society's Desert Research Station (MDRS) Rotation 38, April 3-17, 2005, provided an excellent, cost-effective venue for field testing NASA's Mobile Agents EVA communications system, which features automated workflow between crew and robots; field-activity data management; and alerting and advising for scheduling, navigation, and life support. Bill Clancey lead teams from JSC and Ames in an intensive two weeks of system integration, developing human-robot operations concepts and requirements while doing authentic geology exploration in a Mars analog environment. A Tropos-based mesh wide-area local network (WLAN) gave greater coverage and better dynamic routing than previous solutions. EVA activities were supported by communications planning tools, flexible voice commanding, improved information responses, and management of multiple improvised tasks in parallel. Place names, photo locations, sample sites, and voice notes were automatically stored in a ScienceOrganizer database and entered on TerraServer maps. The operations supervisor had much less work to do than before, demonstrating progress in "automating CapCom." Experiments with a person operating an instrumented ATV (emulating a robot vehicle or scout) demonstrated an ability to test human-robot teaming operations before building actual robots. However, funding delays and parts unavailability did prevent completion of an EVA Robotic Assistant (ERA) arm and a second robot capable of traveling at 30 mph. The Mobile Agents task is currently supported by SISM and the Collaborative Decision Systems project. Ames researchers intend to add planning systems for robot responses to multiple, sometimes conflicting requests from different people, and to develop tools to sketch EVA plans that will compile into formal models. For further information, please see: http://www1.nasa.gov/centers/ames/research/exploringtheuniverse/utah_robots.html. [POC: Bill Clancey, ARC/TI.]
APRIL 2005:
Clarissa in the News:
Clarissa is a speech recognition package that helps astronauts step through checklist procedures. (The ISS has about 10,000 procedures, including mission-critical life support, medical exams, and equipment check-out. Clarissa development has focused on potable water analysis and space suit check-ups.) USA Today's Science & Space web page (http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/space/2005-04-13-clarissa-iss_x.htm) for Apr. 13, 2005, carried an article on Clarissa written by Bjorn Carey of SPACE.com. The article noted that Clarissa is on each ISS client laptop, but that higher priority activities have delayed testing. The software recognizes about 500 words, including 75 voice commands for navigating checklists. English with a Russian accent is understood, but further development is needed to fully screen out background conversations when in "open mic" mode. Senior project scientist John Dowding's long-term goal is to "build computerized systems that can participate as equal partners in otherwise human-human conversations." [POC: Beth Ann Hockey, UCSC/ARC.]
Software Assurance Technologies:
The NASA Software Engineering Initiative, led by the Office of the Chief Engineer, helps infuse software engineering research results into NASA practice. Tom Pressburger recently gave a Software Working Group video teleconference (ViTS; http://ic.arc.nasa.gov/researchinfusion) on available technologies for 2006 collaborative pilot projects funded by the Office of Safety and Mission Assurance's Software Assurance Research Program (OSMA SARP). Proposers can select from thirteen software assurance technologies in seven categories, including Usability & Architecture from Bonnie John of CMU and SpecTRM from Safeware Engineering. Usability & Architecture is a methodology for assuring that a human-in-the-loop architecture supports usability in up to 27 scenarios, such as state cancellation or information reuse. One application led to modification of MERBoard's architecture. SpecTRM (Specification Tools and Requirements Methodology) is an environment for analyzing requirements models for mission-critical and safety-critical systems. It grew from TCAS II work by Prof. Nancy Leveson (MIT), with support by NASA and the FAA. Both tools had SISM support, for human-centered approaches to software engineering reliability. (See MdlUse and HCIDev.) Such methodologies can catch design problems at the requirements level, producing systems that are easily understood, reviewed, simulated, analyzed, and reused. SpecTRM provides services to automotive, aerospace, and medical devices industries, including the Japan Manned Space Systems Corporation. [POC: Tom Pressburger, ARC/TI.]
MARCH 2005:
World Aerospace Congress Sessions:
The World Aerospace Congress (WAC; http://www.sae.org/events/wac/) is a forum for the international aircraft design, development, operations, and research communities. Jorge Bardina of NASA Ames is Chair of the Information Sciences Committee of SAE Aerospace, which is sponsoring 32 presentations in 8 information sciences sessions at WAC 2005, to be held Oct. 3-6, in Dallas, TX. (SAE sponsored a similar number at the World Aviation Congress in Nov. 2004, at Reno, NV. The name has recently changed from Aviation to Aerospace.) Session titles include: Adaptive Control and Model-based Risk Assessment; Autonomy for Aerospace Systems; Business Intelligence; Data Mining, Neural Networks, and Genetic Algorithms; Modeling and Simulation of Aerospace Operations; Robotics, Planning, and Scheduling; Shared Situational Awareness; and Vehicle Component Analysis and Applications. Bardina's research group will present four peer-reviewed papers on launch and range operations, funded by SISM's Intelligent Systems Project. These cover intelligent agents and real-time spaceport operations architectures, a virtual range testbed, and model development from the Columbia Reconstruction Database. Investigators are Jorge Bardina, Rajkumar Thirumalainambi, Luis Rabelo, Ethling Hernandez, and Jose Sepúlveda. They also plan to present new work on "Micro-Flying Robotics in Space Missions." [POC: Jorge Bardina, ARC/TI.]
Brahms Simulation Interface Evaluation:
Scientific study of mission operations may lead to improved practices. The Ames Human-Centered Computing (HCC) group has used Brahms to model and simulate MER mission operations work practices from JPL's 2002-2003 design sessions and field tests. Chin Seah presented a paper on this at the SIMCHI'05 human-computer interface (HCI) session of the Western Simulation Multiconference. The paper -- "Multi-agent Modeling and Simulation Approach for Design and Analysis of MER Mission Operations" -- presented MER designers' reactions to the Brahms interface and simulation output. One lesson is that early use of Brahms could help uncover HCI problems in the design of operations. SIMCHI is the first major forum for research on interface issues in modeling and simulation. It was held by the Society for Modeling and Simulation International, for professionals from simulation, computer science, psychology, new media studies, and the arts. [POC: Chin Seah, SAIC/ARC. Bill Clancey, ARC/TC, william.j.clancey@nasa.gov.]
JANUARY 2005:
Mobile Agents Field Experiments Talk:
Bill Clancey will present an Exploration Technology Forum on "Mobile Agents 2004 Field Experiments: Fitting Robot Capabilities to Human Activities" on January 11, 2005, at ARC. Clancey -- Code TC's Chief Scientist for Human-Centered Computing -- will describe a two-week Mars-analog simulation at the Mars Society's Desert Research Station (MDRS), which had extravehicular activities (EVAs) of over five hours and one kilometer to explore Lith Canyon in Utah. Fifty people from three NASA centers and several universities participated, including a well-organized remote science team (RST). Astronauts used contextual voice commanding and Mobile Agent proxies to control an EVA Robotic Assistant (ERA) and to store field notes in a shared database accessible by the RST. Remote collaboration involved videotaped crew planning, RST review and annotation, and uploading a revised plan to Mobile Agents computers. ERA tasks included autonomous reconnoitering of an EVA site and providing wireless LAN relay, on-command video surveillance and panoramas, and follow-me mode. Future system configurations will have multiple robots (including K-9) actively extending the wireless LAN while monitoring astronaut locations for safety, and dynamic modeling of teamwork relations between people and robots. [POC: Bill Clancey, ARC/TI.]
DECEMBER 2004:
SemanticOrganizer Team Wins Honors:
Rich Keller and the SemanticOrganizer team won two top awards at the International Semantic Web Conference, held November 7-11, 2004, in Hiroshima, Japan. The first was a best conference paper award for "SemanticOrganizer: A Customizable Semantic Repository for Distributed NASA Project Teams." The second was a third-place win -- out of a field of 18 submissions -- in the Semantic Web Challenge 2004 competition. This award, sponsored by the Semantic Web Sciences Association, honors the best and highest-impact new semantic web applications developed each year. Together these awards constitute significant international recognition of the quality of semantic web research and development at NASA Ames. Besides Keller, the team includes Dan Berrios, Robert Carvalho, David Hall, Steve Rich, Ian Sturken, Keith Swanson, Shawn Wolfe, and David Nishikawa. Funding is from SISM, the Engineering for Complex Systems (ECS) Program, and the NASA Astrobiology Institute. [POC: Rich Keller, ARC/TI.]
Team Work Center for NEEMO 7 Operations:
Team Work Center -- incorporating WorkIT 5.0 and a console logger, a report maker, and a Web-based Viewport into updated workspaces, actions, and reports -- provided collaborative teamwork support for JSC's Exploration Planning and Operations Center (ExPOC) control room during the 11-day NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations (NEEMO 7) mission in October. This mission evaluated telemedicine techniques for emergencies on the International Space Station (ISS) or on future space exploration missions. Simulated operations were done in the Aquarius Undersea Research Station, 67 feet below the ocean surface off Key Largo, Florida. ExPOC operators were especially pleased with customizable log entry metadata and handover reports. The new Team Work Center prototype will be delivered in January to users in the ISS Mission Control Center (MCC) Surgeon/Biomedical Engineer (BME) discipline and the ISS Mission Evaluation Room (MER) Crew Health Care System (CHeCS) discipline. WorkIT prototypes have been used continuously in ISS missions for more than a year. [POC: Jane Malin, JSC/ER.]
Subvocal Speech Technology:
It can be hard to make yourself understood in noisy environments or when you are wearing a face mask, mouthpiece, or pressurized breathing system. Chuck Jorgensen and Brad Betts of the Neuro Engineering Smart Systems (NESS) Group have a solution, based on subvocal speech. Under SISM funding they have developed throat sensors to pick up neural signals, and machine learning techniques to recognize silently spoken commands or syllables. So far they have achieved accuracies above 98% for small command vocabularies and above 70% for vowels and consonants. ScienceCentral News -- an NSF-funded affiliate of ABC -- recently recorded a demonstration of this technology for possible use on PBS NOVA. (See also SCN's article.) The demonstration included -- for the first time -- two pressurized breathing modes: a positive-pressurized first-responder firefighter's breathing system (for fire or toxic smoke conditions) and a professional diver suit with mouthpiece. Subvocal signal acquisition was filmed under pressure breathing with pressure valve noise while carrying weighted loads. NASA has been granted a 2004 patent for bioelectric machine control and has filed a patent for subvocal speech recognition. Applications could include communication underwater, in fire gear, in noisy cockpits or operations rooms, or in covert military operations, as well as for speech-impaired medical situations. Jorgensen also envisions a silent cell phone. Previous NESS work demonstrated the ability to fly and land aircraft without a joystick and to type without a keyboard. The NESS Group will be presenting a December paper on subvocal vowel and consonant recognition. [POC: Chuck Jorgensen, ARC/TI. Also Brad Betts, QSS/ARC, and Len Trejo, ARC/TC. NASA ARC, Dominic Hart.]
Understanding Brain Oscillations:
Oscillatory electroencephalographic (EEG) activity in the brain has been hypothesized to mediate both sensory processing and communication between brain regions. Kevin Knuth and eleven NIH-funded collaborators have demonstrated that attention modulates oscillatory activity across the entire visual system, even down to the earliest processing stages in the lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN). Gamma oscillations (above 30 Hz) occur at a particular phase of the theta oscillations (4-8 Hz), which occur at a particular phase of the delta oscillations (0.1-3 Hz). This work was presented at Neuroscience 2004 and the Dynamical Neuroscience XII Symposium. (Neuroscience 2004 is the world's largest scientific forum on the brain and nervous system, with 30,000 participants). Knuth, with IS/IDU and ITSR funding, developed a suite of source-separation algorithms for fully characterizing oscillatory bursts in EEG data. This will help us monitor pilot/astronaut attentional states, and create more effective brain-computer interfaces. A better understanding of how the brain coordinates massively parallel computation across its 100 billion neurons may help us coordinate information flow in an automated sensor web, or construct massively parallel self-organized computing machines. Collaborators in this brain study include Ankoor Shah (Albert Einstein College of Medicine), Steven Bressler (Florida Atlantic University), Mingzhou Ding (University of Florida), Charles Schroeder (Nathan Kline Institute), Peter Lakatos (NKI), Tammy McGinnis (NKI), Amy Mills (NKI), Noelle O'Connell (NKI), C. Chen (NKI), Csaba Rajkai (NKI), and George Karmos (Institute for Psychology, Budapest, Hungary). [POC: Kevin Knuth, ARC/TI.]
Astronaut Class Views Intelligent Systems:
The 2004 NASA Astronaut Class visited the Ames Computational Sciences Division on Nov. 16, 2004. SISM's Intelligent Systems Project funded many of the demonstrated advanced technologies for in-flight use, including the Personal Satellite Assistant (PSA), Clarissa spoken dialog system, and Mobile Agents support for an advanced extravehicular activity (EVA) communications system. Clarissa can be hosted on the PSA for hands-free help in stepping through checklist procedures on board the International Space Station (ISS). Mobile Agents -- based on the Brahms agent architecture -- automates data management, workflow between crew and robots, and alerting and advising for navigation, scheduling, life support, and astronaut health. The astronaut class also viewed Ames' Intelligent Virtual Station (IVS) training environment, developed with SISM Computing, Networking and Information Systems (CNIS) support. [POC: Brett Casadonte, QSS/ARC.]
Mars Field Trial Lecture:
Maarten Sierhuis of RIACS gave the lecture "Computer Supported Collaborative Work of a Distributed Remote Science Team and a Mars Crew" at The Open University (OU) Knowledge Media Institute (KMi) in Milton Keynes, UK, on Nov. 9. Sierhuis presented results of Remote Science Team (RST)/Crew collaboration activities during the 2004 Mobile Agents field test, in which distributed teams of geology and biology students and scientists (from Northern Arizona University, MiraCosta College, and SUNY Buffalo) and a remote meeting facilitator at the OU participated in the crew's extravehicular activities (EVAs) over the course of two weeks. The Intelligence, Agents, Multimedia Group (IAM) of Southampton University (SOU) also collaborated. Supporting software included Compendium (OU), MeetingReplay (SOU), and ScienceOrganizer (ARC). Software agents in the Mobile Agents Architecture executed and monitored the simulated EVA plans. Captured science data was transmitted to the RST for processing while the crew slept. Compendium captured and conveyed RST discussion back to the crew, who used the result for next day's EVA planning. For more on the field trial, including a KMi Podium Webcast of the lecture, go to http://stadium.open.ac.uk/stadia/preview.php?whichevent=491&s=29. [POC: Maarten Sierhuis, RIACS.]
Capture of Operations Knowledge:
Charlotte Linde of the Ames Work Systems Design and Evaluation Group presented "Planning Mars Memory: Learning from the MER Mission" at the International Astronautics Congress in Vancouver, Oct. 5. Her paper on space knowledge management describes observational studies of the MER science and engineering team during three months of twin rover operations. Mission personnel learned to use science planning methods, software tools, and the deep space network to operate remote instruments in the Martian environment. The learning processes are preserved in human memory, stories, programming sequences, published reports, and lessons-learned activities. Study of this knowledge development can suggest ways to capture and use it across multiple missions. [POC: Charlotte Linde, ARC/TI. Also Jay Trimble, ARC/TC.]
MER Ethnographic Talks:
Roxana Wales of the Collaborative and Assistant Systems (CAS) research area gave a keynote presentation on ethnographic methods at a one-day Ethnography Symposium in San Francisco, using examples from the Mars Exploration Rover (MER) Mission. This symposium was part of the Market Research Event conference sponsored by the Institute for International Research. Wales also presented a talk at Stanford's Center for Work, Technology and Organization (WTO) on "Requesting Distant Robotic Action: An Ontology of Work, Naming and Action Identification for Planning on the Mars Exploration Rover Mission." WTO, within Stanford University's Dept. of Management Science and Engineering, studies changing work patterns to design more effective organizations and technologies. [POC: Roxana Wales, SAIC/ARC. Also Jay Trimble, ARC/TC.]
SPIF-e Planner for Human-Robotic Activity:
The SPIF-e (Science Planning InterFace to engineering) mission planning tool aims to push tactical constraint generation earlier into activity planning processes, reducing activity planning time by an order of magnitude. SPIF-e, from the Human-Computer Interface (HCI) Group at Ames, will extend the Mars Exploration Rover (MER) mission's Constraint Editor and MAPGEN intelligent planner. The technologies have proven so successful that SPIF-e is already baselined for -- and funded by -- the Phoenix '07 mission. (Phoenix will analyze soil samples from the icy northern pole of Mars.) SPIF-e is also nominally baselined for the Mars Smart Lander (MSL) '09 mission -- with Mars Technology Program (MTP) and IS/MSL Infusion funding -- for which developers will support astronaut self-scheduling in the context of surface exploration by human-robotic teams. The HCI group will be working closely with JPL's Maestro Group (formerly known as Science Activity Planner, SAP), which won NASA's 2004 Software of the Year Award for their support of MER. [POC: Alonso Vera, ARC/THI.]
NOVEMBER 2004:
Desktop Simulation for UAVs:
Ames has updated RIPTIDE (Real-time Interactive Prototype Technology Integration/Development Environment), a real-time desktop simulation tool for unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) research. The new release can simulate obstacle detection sensors, has new camera views and storage capability for stereo imaging, and offers enhanced map and object scenario display. The software was developed by the Ames Rotorcraft Division and the University Affiliated Research Center (UARC), partly funded by SISM. Several ongoing research activities will immediately benefit from the new release, including ongoing cooperative efforts with Northrop Grumman, Scientific Systems Co., Inc. (SSCI), JPL, and UC Berkeley. [POC: Hossein Mansur, QSS for ARC/ARH. Also Matt Whalley, ARC/ARH.]
CIP and MAPGEN Leads Honored:
Joan Walton and John Schreiner, the MER Collaborative Information Portal (CIP) leads, and Kanna Rajan, the Mixed-initiative Activity Plan Generator (MAPGEN) lead, were presented with the NASA Exceptional Service Medal on Oct. 12 at JPL. Nominations were from the MER Mission Project Manager. The CIP and MAPGEN teams have also won other accolades, including NASA Group Achievement Honor Awards from Ames, the Code R "Turning Goals into Reality" (TIGR) awards, and the NASA Group Achievement award from JPL for contributions to the MER ground data system team. Both CIP and MAPGEN are still supporting extended MER operations. CIP provides mission-critical data and time services, and MAPGEN provides ground-based automated planning and scheduling support for science activity planning. [POC: John Schreiner, ARC/TI. Also Kanna Rajan and Joan Walton, ARC/TC.]
Accountability Client Delivered:
Accountability information reflects the location and status of scientific and engineering data relative to the person requesting it. The Ames Ubiquitous Computing and User-Centered Design Group has recently delivered an Accountability Client to the JPL Deep Space Mission Systems (DSMS) team led by Thom McVittie. It is a graphical user interface (GUI) and front-end client for collecting, analyzing, and distributing accountability information. The client can be used in approving data gathering, planning for the operation, uplinking commands, control of on-board operations, downlinking, ground processing, and delivery of results to the requestor and other parties. This accountability service is the first functional deliverable to the new WebGDS ground data system architecture from DSMS. The development team, led by Ted Shab (and including Al Tomotsugu as GUI Lead Programmer and Dmitriy Lyubimov as the middleware specialist), significantly enhanced an existing GUI interface to JPL's Accountability Web services. The work was jointly funded by DSMS and the SISM Intelligent Systems Project. [POC: Jay Trimble, ARC/TI.]
Social Simulation and Design in BrahmsVE:
A chapter about BrahmsVE -- an agent-based visual simulation environment -- has been accepted for publication in Cognition and Multi-Agent Interaction: From Cognitive Modeling to Social Simulation, a Cambridge University Press book edited by Ron Sun. The chapter is "The Cognitive Modeling of Social Behaviors," by Clancey, Sierhuis, Damer, and Brodsky. It explains the implementation, analyzes what has been learned about simulating social aspects of human behavior, and contrasts Brahms simulation with traditional cognitive models. The visual and analytic simulation of human agents is useful for relating social, cognitive, and perceptual-motor processes. It aids work system design by integrating the diverse perspectives of human factors, cognitive ergonomics, task analysis, and psychosocial analysis. BrahmsVE continues efforts of the Ames Work Systems Design and Evaluation Group, in collaboration with DigitalSpace, Inc. (through SBIR and STTR funding since 2000). A simulation of a crew workday during an analog Mars mission was developed as an Intelligent Systems Project task. The simulation focused on a morning briefing meeting, refilling a water tank, and preparing for an extravehicular activity (EVA) in the Flashline Mars Arctic Research Station. This methodology is directly applicable to the integrated design of the Crew Exploration Vehicle's facilities, system tools, and operations. [POC: Bill Clancey, ARC/TI.]
Habitat Simulation and Design Paper:
Bill Clancey's paper on the recent Mars Desert Research Station trial (MDRS5, Apr. 2002), has been accepted for publication in the journal Habitation as "Participant Observation of a Mars Surface Habitat Mission Simulation." (A preliminary version was presented at the Habitation 2004 conference in Orlando.) The article reviews related habitat research, including Skylab, JSC Chamber Studies, Aquarius (NEEMO), and MIR Simulators. Clancey proposes a framework for relating four levels of concern in habitat design -- survivability, comfort, performance, and adaptability -- paralleling the increasing multi-disciplinary nature of work systems design since the 1960s. [POC: Bill Clancey, ARC/TI.]
Model-Based Instructional Systems:
Bill Clancey (Chief Scientist, Human-Centered Computing, Code TC) has been publicizing NASA's unique instructional situation and methods, including artificial intelligence approaches to training for extravehicular activity (EVA) on the Moon or Mars. Intelligent training and tutoring programs allow students to solve problems in different ways, by tracking the students' knowledge and preferences. Clancey gave the keynote address, "Opportunities for Model-Based Learning Systems in the Human Exploration of Space," at the 9th biannual Intelligent Tutoring Systems Conference held in Maceio, Brazil, Aug. 31-Sep. 3, 2004. Over 200 people attended from 22 countries. A later talk at the University of Fortaleza (UNIFOR) was covered by six television stations and reported in several national newspapers. Clancey also gave the opening address at Training for Tomorrow, an 80-person DOD and NASA event hosted by the JSC Advanced Technology Integration Group (ATIG), Oct. 27-28, 2004. His talk was "Applications for Mission Operations using Multi-Agent Model-based Instructional Systems with Virtual Environments." (Charts and an audio recording will be available in mid-November at http://advtech.jsc.nasa.gov/t404.asp.) Clancey's GUIDON system (1979) was the first use of an expert system as a source of domain knowledge, demonstrating how a single instructional system could be used to teach any number of problem cases in both medical and engineering applications. He sees opportunities for multi-agent and virtual reality job performance aids to increase crew self-reliance. His collaborators include Maarten Sierhuis of RIACS and Bruce Damer of DigitalSpace. [POC: Bill Clancey, ARC/IC.]
OCTOBER 2004:
International Recognition for SemanticOrganizer:
SemanticOrganizer -- a finalist for NASA's Software of the Year -- is one of the top three Semantic Web Challenge candidates this year. The winner will be announced Nov. 7 at the 3rd International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC2004) in Hiroshima. The team's paper ("SemanticOrganizer: A Customizable Semantic Repository for Distributed NASA Project Teams") has also been nominated for an ISWC Best Paper Award. Eighteen submissions competed in the Semantic Web Challenge, the fruit of coordinated investments by DARPA, NSF, and European research agencies. Applications must use heterogeneous real-world data from geographically distributed information sources under diverse ownership. Desiderata include novel uses of the data, exploitation of multimedia documents, and accessibility in multiple languages. Tim Berners Lee coined the term Semantic Web, and has argued that it is the next big thing after the World Wide Web. (See the May, 2001, article by Tim Berners-Lee, James Hendler, and Ora Lassila in Scientific American, http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=00048144-10D2-1C70-84A9809EC588EF21). The ISWC had over 600 participants last year, and is generating a lot of interest. SemanticOrganizer was developed by Rich Keller's team to support field investigations by scientists and astronauts. An extension known as InvestigationOrganizer won a NASA 2004 Turning Goals Into Reality (TGIR) Award for its support of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board. [POC: Rich Keller, ARC/IC.]
SEPTEMBER 2004:
Fundamental Advance in Brain Understanding:
The Data Mining and Complex Adaptive Systems Group at Ames has formulated and conducted an important test of primate neural dynamics, related to monitoring of attentional states of pilots and astronauts. One recent influential theory holds that averaged sensory event-related responses (also called event-related potentials, ERPs) are generated by partial phase resetting of ongoing EEG oscillations, while another theory states that these responses result from stimulus-evoked neural responses. Tests using direct, intracortical analyses of neural activity in the macaque support a predominant role for stimulus-evoked activity in sensory ERP generation. The resulting paper, titled "Neural Dynamics and the Fundamental Mechanisms of Event-Related Brain Potentials," was chosen as the Feature Article in the May 2004 issue of Cerebral Cortex. Collaborators include Ankoor Shah (Albert Einstein College of Medicine), Steven Bressler (FAU), Mingzhou Ding (FAU), Charles Schroeder (Nathan Kline Inst.), Istvan Ulbert (Inst. for Psychology, Budapest), and Ashesh Mehta (Weill Med. College, Cornell). Kevin Knuth is now leading an effort to characterize human EEG responses in a single experimental trial. [POC: Kevin Knuth, ARC/IC.]
AUGUST 2004:
Mars Society Mobile Agents Presentation:
Bill Clancey was invited to make a plenary presentation at the 7th annual International Mars Society Convention (Chicago, Aug. 19-22). Other plenary presentations were by Adm. Craig Steidle, Mike Lembeck, Stanley Borowski, Scott Horowitz, Steve Squyres, and Chris McKay. Over 400 people attended the conference. Clancey spoke on "The Mobile Agents 2004 Field Test: Fitting Robot Capabilities to Human Activities," with video of the CICT-funded Mobile Agents demonstration. This was complemented by a full track of papers organized by Maarten Sierhuis. The project name, Mobile Agents, refers to software running on moving computers, including robots, communicating by a wireless network over a complex terrain of hills and canyons. This will provide an EVA communications system that automates data management, workflow between crew and robots, and alerting and advising for navigation, scheduling, life support, and astronaut health. Rotation 29 at the Mars Society's Desert Research Station (MDRS, April 25-May 9) was completely dedicated to a field test of the system. Organizations collaborating with Code IC included RIACS, UCSC, SUNY Buffalo, JSC, UCB, Verizon, and Northern Arizona University. [POC: Bill Clancey, ARC/IC.]
Clarissa Assistant Accepted for ISS Flight:
Jim Hieronymus (ARC/IC) reports that an ISS flight version of the Clarissa conversational procedure assistant has been accepted at JSC. The NASA Ames Spoken Dialogue Systems (RIALIST) Group designed Clarissa to help astronauts by reading out procedure steps, with hands- and eyes-free navigation of the procedure via spoken commands. Initial demonstrations for a Station Development Test Objective (SDTO) use Potable Water and EMU Checkout Procedures; Clarissa will then be generalized to read and navigate any ISS procedure as part of the International Procedure Viewer. SDTO flight software was delivered to the Computer Resource Group at JSC on July 28 for the 16p launch in November 2004. The delivery package included successful test results from the ISS LAN laboratory. On August 2, Leroy Chiao, the Expedition 10 astronaut who will use Clarissa, was trained along with Expedition 11 astronaut Bill McArthur. The training was the last major action required for the SDTO to go ahead. Clarissa could be used as early as December 2004. Development was supported by HCC and by RIACS. [POC: Jim Hieronymus, ARC/IC.]
GoalNets Editor Accepted:
Jay Trimble reports that JPL has accepted delivery of the GoalNets subnet viewer/editor for the Mars Science Lab (MSL) Mission Data System (MDS) Release 9 build. Goalnets -- formalized representations of state variables with time constraints -- are part of the MDS next-generation mission planning and execution framework. A goalnets editor permits viewing, manipulation, and composition of goals, constraints, subnets, state variables, and value histories. Work by the Ubiquitous Computing and User Centered Design Group (in the Ames Collaborative and Assistant Systems Research Area) has already helped raise and address questions about mission activities, the user's conceptual model, and capabilities of the MDS system. [POC: Jay Trimble, ARC/IC.]
XBoards Tested for the Phoenix Mission:
Ted Shab of the Ames Ubiquitous Computing and User Centered Design Group has installed three XBoards (formerly known as MERBoards) at the new Phoenix building of the University of Arizona's Lunar Planetary Lab, for evaluation by Peter Smith at the central Mission Operation Facility for the upcoming Phoenix Mars Lander. XBoards provide a whiteboard, web browser, ubiquitous data space, remote access, and control and broadcast, for individual or group situation awareness. Plug-ins can customize the boards for each mission environment. [POC: Jay Trimble, ARC/IC.]
JULY 2004:
CICT/Air Force Contact Meeting:
Patty Jones, Acting Chief of the Human Factors R&T Division, hosted an information exchange and planning meeting at Ames on July 28-29. Discussions covered CICT-supported research, Airspace Capacity and Aviation Safety projects, and topics such as adaptive automation (a.k.a. adjustable autonomy); UAV certification for civil airspace; natural language commanding for UAV operations; modular design of human-robotic systems; information fusion and supervisory control; and mixed-initiative systems ((a.k.a. associate systems). Attendees included Drs. Ken Boff, Herb Bell, John Caldwell, and John Reising, all from the Air Force Research Laboratory, plus NASA's Beau Watson, Melissa Mallis, Rob McCann, Mike Shafto, and Roger Remington. [POC: Mike Shafto, ARC/IS.]
Simulated Launch and Range Operations:
Work on the Launch and Range Operations Testbed task under Jorge Bardina was presented at KSC on 7/26 and 7/27, by Luis Rabelo and Jose Sepulveda. This includes the Virtual Range (VR), Virtual Testbed (VTB), and Weather Expert System (WES). The Virtual Range integrates several models for predicting the effects of toxic gas dispersion if a Space Shuttle disaster occurs within 120 seconds after liftoff. The Virtual Testbed, based on DOD's High-Level Architecture (HLA), simulates Shuttle launch preparation and operations, including mission control decisions based on mechanical factors and weather conditions. The latter real-time GO/NOGO decisions can be made by the Weather Expert System, which implements rules provided by the Eastern Range Launch Criteria. [POC: Jorge Bardina, ARC/IC.]
InvestigationOrganizer Team Honored:
The InvestigationOrganizer team supporting the Columbia Accident Investigation Board has been chosen for NASA's 2004 Turning Goals Into Reality (TGIR) Award, in the Associate Administrator's Choice category. InvestigationOrganizer is an extension of SemanticOrganizer, which won a Space Act award in 2003. The software packages grew out of IS funding for Rich Keller's ScienceOrganizer, a database tool for organizing and communicating field and laboratory notes of distributed science teams. Recent tests have demonstrated ScienceOrganizer's utility for EVA team planning coordination and data logging, using a new Web-based application programming interface (API). For more details, see "A Testbed for Agent-Assisted Collaborative Scientific Experimentation," http://is.arc.nasa.gov/HCC/tasks/CollSci.html. [POC: Rich Keller, ARC/IC.]
MER IT Infusion Team Honored:
The Mars Exploration Rover (MER) Information Technology Infusion Team is being recognized with a NASA TGIR Group Achievement Award. The team's software tools -- developed at Ames with IS support -- include the MERBoard collaborative support system, Collaborative Information Portal (CIP) communications and time management system, and Mixed-initiative Activity Plan Generator (MAPGEN) for creating rover task plans. The IT Infusion Team provided 24/7 support for MER operations, with outstanding success. [POC: Jay Trimble, ARC/IC.]
JUNE 2004:
Control of Autonomous UAV Missions:
Mike Shafto (IS/HCC) presented a talk on "UAV-based Autonomous Surveillance: Human Interaction Issues" at the DOD/NASA workshop on Human Factors of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles in Chandler, AZ, May 24-25, 2004. The talk, jointly authored by Mike Freed and Rob Harris is about design and evaluation of mixed-initiative systems for autonomous airborne surveillance, an important topic in military, civil, and space-exploration applications. CICT and other NASA and DOD sources fund research in this area as part of the Army/NASA Autonomous Rotorcraft Project. Mary Kaiser, Beau Watson, and Jay Shively presented other NASA work at the conference. [POC: Mike Shafto, ARC/IS.]
Presentation of Human Modeling Research:
HCC-supported work on human-system modeling was presented at the 2004 Conference on Behavior Representation in Modeling and Simulation (BRIMS) in Washington, DC, May 17-20, 2004. NASA co-sponsors BRIMS with the Army, Navy, Air Force, and DARPA. Mike Shafto presented an overview of IS HCC research, and Maarten Sierhuis and Chin Seah gave a half-day tutorial on the Brahms agent-based modeling system. Researchers also presented NASA Aeronautics human-performance modeling work and other CICT-funded university research. [POC: Mike Shafto, ARC/IS.]
MAY 2004:
Mobile Agents Field Test:
More than 50 people participated in Rotation 29 at the Mars Society's Desert Research Station (MDRS, April 25-May 9), a rotation dedicated to testing NASA's Mobile Agents EVA communications system. The project -- under PI Bill Clancey and project lead Maarten Sierhuis -- is approaching TRL 6 by demonstrating authentic geology exploration in a Mars analog environment. Field conditions varied from cloudy days requiring winter coats to a week of near 90ºF and 5% humidity, plus a dust storm and a day with impassable mud. The EVA Robotic Assistant (ERA) followed mock astronauts, helping with communications and field geology sample collection. (In a separate test, the ERA traveled autonomously for 1162 meters in 6.73 hours.) EVA activity plans were automatically generated from a semi-formal representation using the Compendium groupware tool. A remote science team (RST) reviewed and annotated each day's crew-created EVA plan, using Compendium's Meeting Replay tool to comment on the crew's discussions. All EVA data and alerts (tagged with plan locations and activities) were recorded in ScienceOrganizer, with notifications sent to the RST. Informal daily journals and photographs are available at http://www.marssociety.org/MDRS/fs03/. [POC: Bill Clancey, ARC/IC.]
Human-Robotic Interactions:
Bill Clancey's article on "Roles for Agent Assistants in Field Science: Personal Projects and Collaboration" has appeared in a special issue on Human-Robotic Interactions. This issue of IEEE Trans. on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, Part C (May 2004, Vol. 34, No. 2, pp. 125-137) stems from a 2001 study by DARPA and NSF that allowed roboticists to interact with psychologists, sociologists, cognitive scientists, communication experts, and human-computer interaction specialists. Clancey reports on two case studies: an analysis of Apollo 17 CapCom interaction with astronauts, and robot-assisted field biology/geology studies at Haughton Crater in the High Canadian Arctic. He says that the primary concern in designing robotic or software agents is to help people pursue their independent and collaborative projects. Robots can assist, but not yet collaborate. The question is not human-robotic interaction, but support for people interacting with each other. Clancey is Chief Scientist in IS/HCC, and works in the Collaborative and Assistant Systems Research Area, Work Systems Design and Evaluation Group. [POC: Bill Clancey, ARC/IC.]
APRIL 2004:
Mobile Agents Field Test in the News:
CNN.com picked up a Space.com article about a shakedown test of the Mobile Agents system at Ames, in preparation for field tests in the Utah desert. Apollo astronauts on the Moon were in constant contact with Mission Control. That won't be possible on Mars, due to communication delays. The Mobile Agents system -- referring to software agents in backpack and rover-based computers -- will record astronauts' field notes, transmit commands to the rovers (and warnings to the astronauts), and perform other intelligent support functions. The Utah field tests will help develop capabilities for Moon EVAs, a step toward Mars exploration. The media articles are http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/space/04/14/software.planets/index.html and http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/technology/mobileagents_techwed_040414.html. [POC: Bill Clancey, ARC/IC.]
SLAB Acoustic Modeling Software:
SLAB (Sound Lab) is a real-time, software-based system for creating virtual acoustic environments used in psycho-acoustic research. It generates localized sound sources without the expense of physical simulations. SLAB has been moved to a PC platform, to take advantage of the rapid evolution of commercial computing. Free distribution (via a public usage agreement) is facilitating customer use, research collaborations, and further development. The software is being developed in the Spatial Auditory Displays Lab at NASA Ames Research Center. HCC PI Durand Begault used SLAB for "Human-Centered Design of Multimodal Virtual Environment Displays," a task studying sensory tradeoffs in low-bandwidth teleoperation for cooperative tasks. [POC: Durand Begault, ARC/IHH.]
Intent Capture and Communication:
Jay Trimble's Human-Centered Computing Group at Ames is looking beyond its MERBoard success to intent capture and round-trip information tracking for JPL multi-mission systems. The first customer will be JPL's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), for tracking of data products from initial request to downlinked data product. This will extend the idea of intent frames, developed for JPL MER use for communication across shifts. Trimble's group also provided a strategic planning tool, ubiquitous data access and sharing, hypothesis and naming spaces, and a consistent conceptual model across heterogeneous applications. For the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL), the group is designing a collaborative user interface for goal nets that will allow users to create, edit, and visualize complex goal networks. [POC: Jay Trimble, ARC/IC.]
Cmaptools with Intelligent Suggesters:
Concept maps (Cmaps) are an easy-to-use graphical and quasi-propositional representation for knowledge capture and sharing. David Leake of Indiana University has been adding a concept suggester (in Cmaptools) that draws on archived Cmaps and on the Wide World Web to help a Cmap developer add new concept boxes. Recent experiments with 20 subjects are helping screen candidate concepts for importance in a growing Cmap. Factors include the concept's distance from the map's root, its connectivity, and the influence of hub and authority nodes. One of the initial HCC-sponsored Cmap applications has been the production of concept graphs for Mars exploration, including ideas for sample return from Gusev Crater. A paper on the recent work, "Aiding Knowledge Capture by Searching for Extensions of Knowledge Models," is available as http://www.cs.indiana.edu/~leake/papers/p-03-03.pdf. [POC: David Leake, IU.]
Agent Software for Distributed Operations:
Jane Malin's Human-Centered Assistant Systems team at JSC has developed software tools and agents to support distributed, collaborative mission operations teamwork. Initial implementation was for Advanced Life Support System (ALSS) anomaly response. Two of the teamwork tool prototypes are being evaluated at JSC Mission Control Center (MCC) in 2004, via ISS mission simulations. The D-Logger and WorkIT tools can reduce constant data monitoring during management of vehicles and planetary bases. Information from console logs and anomaly response that is captured in databases becomes more organized and accessible. This will improve flight controller teamwork, by smoothing handovers between groups (and shifts) and by reducing information-seeking interruptions. HCC PI Jiajie Zhang of the University of Texas developed this human-centered design methodology for the ISS Flight Surgeon/Biomedical Engineer Console. The agent-based approach is suited to high workload, information intensive, interruption-laden, team-based, and mission critical applications. It can improve mission operations performance by re-engineering workflow and reducing interruptions; increase crew safety by reducing human errors; and reduce turnover of support engineers by improving user experience and satisfaction. [POC: Jane Malin, JSC/ER.]
Mobile Agents Project "Marscape" Test:
The Mobile Agents Project at Ames and JSC uses software agents to help coordinate astronauts, vehicles, and robots -- and perhaps an Earth-based distributed Remote Science Team -- during scientific field operations. The agents monitor what is happening, accept commands, share information over a MEX wireless network, and provide warnings in the astronauts' headphones and to mission controllers. The Mobile Agents development team has completed a successful Operational Readiness Test (ORT), including simulated operations in Ames' outdoor "Marscape" test facility. Pictures and text are available at http://amesnews.arc.nasa.gov/releases/2004/mobile_agents/mobile_agents.html. The outdoor integrated test was covered by local news media, including KTVU and KNTV. Another field test, with real science activities, will be conducted at the end of April at the Mars Society's Mars Desert Research Station in Utah's Southeast Desert. The tests involve a simulated space-suited astronaut working with JSC's Extravehicular Activity (EVA) Robotic Assistant and a simulated Mars habitat communications hub. Mobile Agents software is built on the Brahms multi-agent simulator and RIALIST spoken-dialogue system. [POC: Bill Clancey, ARC/IC.]
MEX Networks for Planetary Exploration:
Field simulations for the Mobile Agents Project have spurred advances in wireless LAN backbone and cluster configuration for support of planetary fieldwork. Richard Alena of the Intelligent Mobile Technologies group -- which developed the Mobile Exploration System (MEX) wireless communication system -- has written a paper about interaction of radio frequency domain and the Internet Protocol media access control layer. Co-authors are John Ossenfort, Charles Lee, Edward Walker, and Thom Stone. The paper, "Design of Hybrid Mobile Communication Networks for Planetary Exploration," was presented at the IEEE Aerospace Conference, March 6-13. [POC: Rick Alena, ARC/IC.]
MERBoard Highlighted in New Book:
MERBoard has been used to display satellite views and HazCam images for Mars rover traverses, facilitating discussions of options. Other common uses include Sol Tree support; tracking of assigned Mars feature names; whiteboard sharing and capture; and the display of mission clocks and schedules. Kenton O'Hara's new book, Public and Situated Displays: Social and Interactional Aspects of Shared Display Technologies, examines the new field of public and situated displays. Chapter 2, "NASA's MERBoard, an Interactive Collaborative Workspace Platform," by Jay Trimble, Roxana Wales and Rich Gossweiler, describes MERBoard research in the context of computer-supported cooperative work. Readers are introduced to the MERBoard, the human-centered observations that lead to its creation and design, and early observations in field tests preparing for MER surface operations. [POC: Jay Trimble, ARC/IC.]
Lessons from CIP Use:
Joan Walton, Leslie Keely, and Ronald Mak presented a talk on "NASA's Collaborative Information Portal: HCI Lessons Learned" to Stanford's Human-Computer Interaction Seminar (led by Terry Winograd). The Collaborative Information Portal, developed with HCC and CNIS support, has delivered over 88 GB in 256K files to 330 registered users (as of 3/14/04). An average of about 50 clients are active at any given time. Developers and support engineers interact with CIP's middleware and data tiers, which also support MERBoard, Viz , and the MER reporting system (Quill). Human interaction ranges from sophisticated graphical user interfaces to XML-based configuration files. CIP clocks -- which maintain Mars Local Solar Times (LST) and standard Earth times with millisecond accuracy -- are always on display in the main mission work areas. Unfortunately, network latency can delay times posted to clients by several seconds. Despite repeated admonitions, end users rely upon the displayed times and expect them to be correct. Studying such problems can lead to improvements in future systems. [POC: Joan Walton, ARC/IC.]
MER Science Work Studies:
The Ames Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) group has been collecting data on MER science and uplink operations. This will give future missions an empirical understanding of ground systems tools -- e.g., MERBoard, the Science Activity Planner (SAP), and Constraint Editor/MAPGEN -- for problem solving, decision making, and planning. Bill Clancey, Valerie Shalin, and Roxana Wales are also assessing the relationship between MER science work and planning and the development of scientific hypotheses. Better understanding of scientific reasoning may improve tools, science data collection, mission productivity, and interactions between rover and science teams on future missions. [POC: Roxana Wales, SAIC/ARC.]
Software Agents with Human Behavior:
Jane Malin of JSC has presented a paper on "Interaction between Autonomous Systems and Anomaly Response Teams," at the AAAI 2004 Spring Symposium. The paper discusses the three types of control/communication needed to emulate human-to-human loose coordination in extended operations teamwork and anomaly response tasks. These include team awareness information, mixed-initiative interaction for problem solving, and interruption with safe resumption in a changed situation. NASA Postdoc users may access the paper at https://postdoc.arc.nasa.gov/postdoc/t/folder/main.ehtml?url_id=124070. [POC: Jane Malin, JSC/ER.]
Susan Rinkus Wins Nursing Informatics Award:
Susan Rinkus of the University of Texas at Houston won the Nursing Informatics Award in the Proceedings of the American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA 2003), for the paper "Designing a Knowledge Management System for Distributed Activities: A Human Centered Approach" (with K.A. Johnson-Throop and J. Zhang). This stems from work -- with HCC PI Jiajie Zhang of the University of Texas at Houston -- on the next-generation flight surgeon consol within the Comprehensive Medical Information System (CMIS). The Space Medical Agents Resource Technology (SMART) console will help flight surgeons and biomedical engineers access and use pertinent health-related data. [POC: Jiajie Zhang, UTHSCH.]
Clarissa Procedure Assistant Training Release:
The Clarissa team has completed a training release of their procedure and checklist assistant system, moving toward a flight experiment later this year. Clarissa is an interactive dialogue system to help astronauts navigate complex International Space Station (ISS) procedures. It includes speech recognition, dialogue management, and speech synthesis (using high-quality recorded speech. It can track progress through a procedure (or multiple active procedures, with interruptions), review past steps and preview future ones, take and play back audio notes, set alarms (in response to spoken commands), and give more details about operations being performed. The visual display can show diagrams and photographs to illustrate equipment features and functions. For sensitive procedures, a challenge-verify mode is available. Initial knowledge bases include WMK-Nominal In-flight Water Processing; In-Flight Coliform Detection; Visual Analysis and Data Recording; EMU Checkout; and LCVG Water Fill. This and other projects of the RIALIST group at Ames Research Center are described at http://www.riacs.edu/navroot/Research/Projects_detail/Human.jsp. [POC: Jim Hieronymus, ARC/IC.]
MARCH 2004:
JSC DCI Team Selected for AIM Benchmark:
Debra Schreckenghost (Metrica) and JSC's team for the HCC-supported task "Distributed Crew Interaction with Advanced Life Support Control Systems" have been selected to participate in the Advanced Integration Matrix (AIM) Benchmark Test to be conducted at JSC in the fall of 2004. Their experiment will evaluate distributed test operations, including remote access; notification based on roles when problems occur; summarization and archiving of problem and test performance information; and maintaining awareness of team members, including tracking their location and activities. AIM will develop, test, and validate the integration of mission systems for long-duration human exploration missions. It was created by the Office of Biological and Physical Research (OBPR) and is managed under the Engineering Directorate at JSC. The one-week AIM benchmark test will integrate 3-5 Science, Engineering, Technology, and Operations (SETO) areas with hardware of TRL 3 to 6. [POC: Debbie Schreckenghost, Metrica/JSC.]
Launch and Range Simulation:
The Launch and Range Operations Virtual Test Bed (VTB) at UCF includes models of air traffic, space launch trajectory data, "return to launch site" profiles, and models of weather, range instruments, instrument scheduling, conflict prediction, and cognitive process analysis. The VTB run time infrastructure (RTI) software is now completed and was presented to NASA on 3/18/04. An associated report on "XML - Schemas" has also been delivered, incorporating recommendations of collaborators and subject area experts at NIST. Materials are available for review on KPRO. A side investigation of several HLA-compatible languages produced models working in the Anylogic and COREsim languages. MSFC uses COREsim, and Anylogic is an interesting simulation environment with JAVA, XML, and agents. Jeppie Compton of All Points Logistics has led VTB work at UCF, under IS PI Jorge Bardina at ARC. Four new papers on range operations will be presented at the SPIE Defense and Security Symposium in April and the 18th European Simulation Multiconference (ESM) in June. [POC: Jeppie Compton, APL/KSC.]
UCF NASA Faculty Fellows at KSC:
José Sepulveda and Luis Rabelo of UCF's Launch and Range Operations Virtual Test Bed (VTB) have been selected by the NASA Faculty Fellowship Program (NFFP) for ten weeks at KSC this summer. This will aid tech infusion to KSC from the HCC-supported VTB. Awards were announced by the University Research Division of KSC's Education office. [POC: Eduardo Lopez del Castillo, KSC.]
D-Logger for BioMedical Engineer Support:
BioMedical Engineer (BME) flight controllers used and evaluated JSC's D-Logger (Databased-Logger) in Space Station mission simulations the week of March 8, 2004. One simulation included an elaborate preparation for an extravehicular activity (EVA), which involves intensive BME flight controller participation as astronauts perform "pre-breathing" to rid their blood gases of potentially troublesome nitrogen. Flight controllers provided ideas for improving D-Logger, as well as a wealth of information in the form of supporting documentation (user artifacts). Overall, their response to D-Logger has been very positive. D-Logger is being prototyped in JSC's "Human Centered Systems and Agents for Distributed Operations, supported by HCC. [POC: Jane Malin, JSC/ER.]
ScienceOrganizer Communications Agent:
A major challenge in exploration is the coordination of dozens of human explorers and robotic assistants and the organized transmission of their data to remotely located science teams. To meet this challenge, the Ames ScienceOrganizer and Mobile Agents teams have proposed a ScienceOrganizer Communications Agent. This software agent is responsible for tracking scientific and mission-related data (and meta-data) collected during Mobile Agents exploration simulations. The agent relies on a newly developed ScienceOrganizer web application programming interface (API). Initial testing during a Brahms planetary exploration simulation created ScienceOrganizer data items that could be examined, downloaded, annotated, analyzed and linked to other items. Eventually, science team members will be able to direct the activities of field explorers and robotic assistants through the ScienceOrganizer interface, to guide the collection of scientific data and create a full, round-trip collaboration cycle of exploration activity planning, execution, and review. [POC: Dan Berrios, RIACS.]
CIP Appreciation:
The Collaborative Information Portal (CIP) system has had only four hours of server downtime over the MER mission to date. A server maintenance restart on 2/4/04 prompted Lisa R. Gaddis, Team Chief Scientist of the USGS Astrogeology Program, to comment: "While I was MI PDL last night, I felt and heard (on the VOCA) the effects of CIP being down for a little while. It was clear that it has become an invaluable tool, and we all count on it every sol. The fact that we're taxing it also testifies to its utility. It's a great tool!" CIP is installed on all of the approximately 250 Flight Operations surface workstations and over 229 personal computers. It was developed with funding from CICT CNIS and HCC. [POC: Joan Walton, ARC/IC.]
Len Trejo Honored:
Leonard J. Trejo will be featured as "Professional of the Week" by the Hispanic Engineer National Achievement Awards Conference (HENAAC), on their web site http://www.henaac.org/ for March 22, 2004. Corporate, government, academic, military, and business groups have submitted thousands of nominees over the past 14 years for this prestigious recognition as a role model. Trejo works in Code IC's Neuroengineering Research area, and recently completed an HCC NRA task in "Multimodal Neuroelectric Human-Computer Interface Development." His electroencephalographic (EEG) and electromyographic (EMG) controls for computer displays may help astronauts work in pressure suits. [POC: Len Trejo, ARC/IC.]
FEBRUARY 2004:
GoalNets Editor for MSL'09:
The Ames HCI group is working toward a next-generation mixed-initiative planning tool, in collaboration with Code IC's Planner group, JPL's multi-mission tool group, and five Masters Program students from CMU's Human-Computer Interaction Institute (HCII). Mike McCurdy at ARC is leading this JPL-funded effort to design the GoalNets Editor for Mission Data Systems (MDS), the baseline software foundation for the Mars Science Laboratory '09 Mission. Code IC's Ubiquitous Computing and User Centered Design Group will implement the tool. The planning tool will upload goal networks instead of command sequences, allowing a rover to plan its activities based on current circumstances rather than projections. [POC: Irene Tollinger, ARC/IH.]
CIP Displays Rover Timelines:
Rover Activity Plan event timelines generated by the MAPGEN team are now available within the Collaborative Information Portal (CIP). There has also been increased use of CIP's Broadcast Announcements Tool (BAT) to provide the location of PanCam models and other reduced science data products. [POC: Joan Walton, ARC/IC.]
MERBoard Information Sharing:
Eighteen MERBoards are operational in the MER Mission Support Areas. They are used -- independently -- in the science areas, the sequence mission support area, and the surface mission support area for situational awareness (via CIP schedules and clocks) and image display, assessment, and markup. The long-term planning group uses MERBoard's Sol Tree Tool to develop multiple flow chart representations of alternative rover paths and activities, with calculated mission success criteria for each plan. Sol Trees can be saved (with version control) in multiple MERSpace data spaces -- where they are accessible from any MERBoard -- and can be downloaded to a personal computer using MERBoard Personal Client Software or the MERSpace Web Site. Data can also be exported to the MERBoard whiteboard using CIP DataNav, OSS Explorer for MERBoard, or the MERBoard Web Browser. (The whiteboard is used to develop unstructured representations of mission ideas and plans, to be saved and recalled for later use. The first long-term planning presentation for Spirit, immediately following landing, was developed on a MERBoard whiteboard and presented to the team from a MERBoard.) MERBoard's ubiquitous data spaces are also being used for hypothesis files and target naming data. [POC: Jay Trimble, ARC/IC.]
CIP Use:
The Collaborative Information Portal (CIP) is now simultaneously supporting both MER-A (Spirit) and MER-B (Opportunity), providing 326 users with laptop access to data, schedules, and reports. Schedule management for science activities is particularly critical now. Some of the users are remote from JPL, and stored information is from JPL, Ames, and HQ. CIP development was funding by CNIS and HCC. [POC: Joan Walton, ARC/IC.]
Bill Clancey Honored:
Bill Clancey, HCC Chief Scientist, has been chosen by Irish America Magazine as one of its 100 outstanding Irish Americans. Clancey will be featured in the April/May issue and honored at the Gala Awards Presentation to be held at the New York Plaza Hotel on 3/16/04. (Sean O'Keefe, NASA Administrator, was a previous speaker for Irish America.) Clancey is with Code IC's Collaborative and Assistant Systems Research Area, and leads the Work Systems Design and Evaluation Group (where Valerie Shalin and Roxana Wales, with Debra Bass of JPL, have recently created a successful four-level uplink prioritization scheme for science observations). A chapter by Clancey appears in a new book about preparing for the human exploration of Mars, described at http://www.univelt.com/marspubs.html. The chapter concerns Mars analog field expeditions and automation of Apollo CapCom functions. Clancey also spoke recently at the UC San Diego Distributed Cognition and HCI Laboratory Symposium, and at a NorCal Mars Society outreach event (1/24-25/04) at the Tech Museum of Innovation in San Jose. The latter talk, "If We Have Robots, Why is NASA Sending People to Mars?," highlighted management of the MER robotic laboratories and how this relates to human exploration. KTVU Channel 2 (Oakland, San Francisco, San Jose) broadcast a segment on both the 5 PM and 10 PM news programs that evening, including an interview with Bill Clancey. Channel 4 also broadcast an extended segment from Clancey's presentation. [POC: Bill Clancey, ARC/IC.]
Learning How It's Done:
After two days of confusion over which Mars features had been given which names, Steve Squyres called for a white rock tiger team under Ray Arvidson. Ray and Roxana Wales used MERBoard plasma screens and software to help scientists name and track individual rocks. Part of the solution was a large image that could be annotated with feature names and characteristics. (Another part was to maintain a list of "white things" -- polar bear, snow, onion, ivory, etc. -- to be used as mnemonic labels. Development using MERBoard took only a minor effort, and will generate useful experience for design of later mission operations and software. Another innovative MERBoard use is the generation of Sol-trees to map out the science intent at a site. A Science Operations Working Group (SOWG) from the Ames CAS Work Systems Design and Integration Group is studying the Mars exploration process, taking notes, pictures, and video of Mission operations and tool use. (One identified problem is associating returned Mars data with scientists' needs that led to the data gathering. Another is the need for common information spaces, for information resources that many people need but none can maintain on their own.) Team members have worked with the JPL Science Operations Support Team and Athena Science team for over three years. [POC: Roxana Wales, SAIC/ARC.]
JANUARY 2004:
Tacit Knowledge Paper:
Charlotte Linde's "Narrative and Social Tacit Knowledge Matters" -- named Best Paper of the Year of the Journal of Knowledge Management, 2002 -- has been selected for republication by In Thought & Practice: The Journal of the Knowledge and Innovation Management Professional Society (KMPro), July 2003. Linde is a linguist serving as a Senior Research Scientist at NASA Ames. HCC has funded her work in support of the MER mission. [POC: Charlotte Linde, ARC/IC.]
CIP Schedule Display Use:
A walk through MER operations on January 9 found the Collaborative Information Portal (CIP) running on most machines, showing schedules, clocks, or the latest mission data. CIP has also provided time services in the Von Karman Auditorium during press conferences, at the request of JPL External Affairs. On NASA TV, all the displays shown behind the Flight Manager and Mission Manager are CIP schedules and clocks. Flight Directors maintain the schedules using CIP's Excel spreadsheet entry tool and their own software applications. CIP development was funded by HCC and CNIS. [POC: Joan Walton, ARC/IC.]
Work Practice Study Results:
The Habitation 2004 conference, co-sponsored by NASA, has added cognitive and social perspectives to its life support and biosphere science interests. (Its associated journal is similarly expanding.) Bill Clancey, ARC's Chief Scientist for HCC, presented a paper on "A Closed Mars Analog Simulation: A Work Practice Study of Crew 5 at the Mars Desert Research Station." The paper describes research practices that increased available productive time by 41%, total EVA person-hours by 53%, and the number of other completed tasks by 20%. The HCC-funded study was based on systematic recording and time-lapse video in a controlled simulation scenario. MDRS5 crew members were from several universities, Lockheed-Martin, and ESA. [POC: Bill Clancey, ARC/IC.]
Software System Safety Training:
Nancy Leveson of MIT has developed a Software System Safety Class, based in part on HCC- and ECS-supported research in human-machine interaction. Topics include software-related accidents and a holistic, control-based approach to designing safe and reliable software; also safety verification and the organization and management of safety-critical projects. The program, to be presented at NASA Centers, consists of eleven weekly five-hour sessions. [POC: Nancy Leveson, MIT.]
CIP Usage Statistics:
Collaborative Information Portal (CIP), developed with IS and CNIS funding, is the primary schedule tracking and coordination tool for MER and is being used increasingly for time conversions, broadcast announcements, and other functions. The Surface Mission Support Area (MSA) presents CIP on two to four projections screens and two MERBoards -- and, at any given time, on two to six workstations. Many users are also running the CIP client on their wireless laptops, for schedule management and general information access. Flight Directors maintain schedules in an interactive and collaborative mode, using an Excel spreadsheet entry tool developed by the CIP team. CIP middleware services are also supporting the VIZ visualization application and the QUILL reporting system used by MER. Performance has been outstanding in relation to CIP's design requirements. As of 5 AM PST on 1/12/2004, Sol 9, over 13.6 GB of data in 61,127 files had been delivered to 287 registered users in more than 21 days of continuous server up-time. Follow the link for slides of CIP in action. [POC: John Schreiner, ARC/IC.]
MERBoard and CIP in Use:
IS PI Jay Trimble reports that MERBoard and the Collaborative Information Portal (CIP) are in use by MER personnel. MERBoard is a collaborative system for strategic and tactical science planning, such as the construction of Sol Trees. Scientists are also using it to display images and mission data, and as a whiteboard for long-term planning. A remote mode allows information on one of the plasma touch screens to be mirrored on other boards throughout the room. Project management tools available on MERBoard include JPL's Science Activity Planner (SAP), an adaptation of the Web Interface for Telescience (WITS). CIP integrates human-centered computing work from ARC, CMU, Stanford, MIT, Wright State, SJSU, and IBM, and has been a testbed for research in concept maps, knowledge sharing, collaborative science, and other CICT technologies. A brief shot of MERBoard in use for image display can be seen in a JPL rover testing video. [POC: Jay Trimble, ARC/IC.]
Constraint Editor for MER Operations:
Based on substantial usability studies, Alonso Vera's Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) group re-designed MER's Constraint Editor tool to support transfer of scientific intent through the command uplink process for the Mars Exploration Rovers '03 mission. This redesigned tool will aid development and capture of scientific constraints -- in the hundreds -- as part of the critical tactical uplink process for MER. (For example, images may have to be taken at two-hour intervals to measure atmospheric change over time.) The Constraint Editor consequently provides a real-time view of the state of an evolving plan. Mission engineers then use MAPGEN, an IS-funded automated planner, to generate an activity plan that gets built into command sequences for the rover. The Constraint Editor interface was designed at the request of the MAPGEN team, and funded within HCC's "Intelligent Launch and Range Operations" task. The HCI group worked closely with the MER PI, Steve Squyres, and several of the key scientists on the Athena Science team. They also helped train Constraint Editor users. [POC: Alonso Vera, ARC/IHI.]
DECEMBER 2003:
Collaborative Information Portal:
The Mars Exploration Rover Project team has completed several critical activities, including Flight Software Upload Readiness Review (ORR); Flight Software Upload; Entry, Descent, and Landing (EDL)/Surface Operations Readiness Review; and Post-launch Operational Readiness Test PORT-10. The MER team is using the Collaborative Information Portal (CIP or MERCIP), a Web-based hub and distribution center for vital information. It will provide a broad range of science and mission data to operations and science teams, with user customization for increased relevance and context. At any time, on any computer, a team member can quickly find reports, images, daily schedules, plans, and other data. CIP development was supported by HCC and CNIS. It will be used with another Ames technology, the MERBoard, a combination of software and large touchscreens that enables team members to gather around a screen to view, share, and annotate information. [POC: John Schreiner, ARC/IC.]
Naval Strategic Studies Presentation:
Bill Clancey was invited by Admiral James R. Hogg (Ret.) to present topics related to human-centered computing on November 24, 2003, at the Naval War College, to the Chief of Naval Operations Strategic Studies Group (SSG). Following an overview of human factors and decision support research by Robert Hoffman (IHMC/UWF Pensacola), Clancey presented NASA's progress in developing mobile agents for supporting highly distributed human-robotic operations. [POC: Bill Clancey, ARC/IC.]
Scientific Practice of Education and Learning:
The Allerton NSF Workshop on Scientific Practice of Education and Learning, Nov. 22-23, 2003, addressed theoretical foundations of research into the practice of teaching and learning. Participants studied three hours of video from a mathematics class, in which students created, analyzed, and presented graphs. IS PI Bill Clancey presented the transactional perspective, which supports biology-inspired approaches to intelligent systems and model-based reasoning. Such practice-based research is relevant to NASA's own instructional programs, and applicable to any ethnographic study of NASA's operations, modeling tools, and organizational learning. (The CAIB Report, for example, includes a transactional relation in the use of the Crater mathematical modeling tool that led to misinterpretation of a simulation model's results.) [POC: Bill Clancey, ARC/IC.]
NOVEMBER 2003:
SPEEDES Virtual Range Modeling:
The SPEEDES Virtual Test Bed (VTB) team at the University of Central Florida has implemented a basic Web-enabled graphical user interface (in JAVA) that allows users to run Shuttle Process Flow simulations without knowledge of SPEEDES. This is supported within HCC's Intelligent Launch and Range Operations task. SPEEDES is the Synchronous Parallel Environment for Emulation and Discrete-Event Simulation. The VTB team is adding graphical user interface links to several animations and virtual reality environments (such as the Virtual Lab). [POC: Jeppie Compton, APL/KSC.]
NTR Award for Facilities Design:
Roxana Wales of Ames Research Center has received New Technology Reporting award NTR-30457, for "Advanced Mars Mission Science Operations Facility Design" and contribution to the National Space Program and to the mission of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. This stems from IS/HCC-funded work with Jeff Norris of Caltech on design of collaborative environments or "situation rooms" with shared computer use. Their study resulted in NASA Tech Brief NPO-30457, "Designing Facilities for Collaborative Operations," Feb. 2003, and helped refine the MER operations facility design. The award was announced by the NASA Inventions and Contributions Board (NICB). [POC: Roxana Wales, SAIC/ARC.]
OCTOBER 2003:
Agents for Distributed Team Operations:
The HCC subproject has demonstrated agent-based tools for information management in a JSC testbed for routine mission operations. The agent-based monitoring and notification system successfully supported biomedical monitoring and automated life support applications, reducing the need for vigilant monitoring by humans, helping to focus crew attention during important events, coordinating actions, and providing web-based access to event summaries. This supervisory system provides automated and mixed-initiative planning of schedules, activity tracking, and procedure support, with flexible response to contingencies, flight rule changes, human unavailability, and monitored failures. Software agents track and display the roles, locations, and activities of distributed team members to improve awareness and coordinate response to complex situations. Some component technologies are currently being deployed and tested in ISS operations, though additional testing and integration are required. Presentations and reports on these agent-based systems are available to Postdoc users. [POC: Jane Malin, JSC/ER.]
Brahms Multi-agent System Modeling:
The Brahms Virtual Environment development team is working towards an integration of Adobe's new Virtual World environment (Atmosphere) and the Brahms agent language. With the BrahmsVE environment and Brahms agent language it is possible to program intelligent bots inside a virtual wo
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