unitex@rubbs.fidonet.org (unitex) (08/14/89)
NASA: NEW SYSTEM USES ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
Voyager 2's near encounter of Neptune in late August will
provide researchers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL),
Pasadena, Calif., with an opportunity to demonstrate a new expert
system designed to monitor the condition of interplanetary
spacecraft and ground operations.
The software demonstration, called the Spacecraft Health
Automated Reasoning Prototype (SHARP), will be used by mission
operators to better analyze radio signals from spacecraft as they
are received through the Deep Space Network ground stations and
sent to the mission control center at JPL.
The computer program combines conventional computer science
methods with artificial intelligence techniques to automatically
detect and analyze potential spacecraft and ground data systems
problems.
Designed by the JPL's Computer Science and Applications
Section, SHARP is written in the LISP programming language and
uses an advanced artificial intelligence programming tool,
STAR#TOOL. The program supplies a variety of advanced techniques
needed for building artificial intelligence systems to meet
NASA's goals for future space exploration.
The SHARP team, headed by computer scientist David Atkinson,
earmarked Voyager 2's flyby of Neptune as a vigorous operational
setting in which to evaluate the performance of the SHARP
system. The telecommunications subsystem of the spacecraft was
chosen for the prototype demonstration because glitches
frequently occur in the telecommunications link.
"The technology is being extended in the next year to
monitor other spacecraft subsystems, such as power, attitude and
articulation control and scientific instrumentation," Atkinson
said. "In addition, SHARP will be used to monitor several
spacecraft missions simultaneously, including the Magellan
mission to Venus and Galileo mission to Jupiter."
The SHARP system provides a broad range of analysis
functions to aid in monitoring spacecraft and ground control
systems. Information from a variety of data sources, for
example, is centralized into a single workstation. SHARP
automates processing and analysis of that data to enable
automatic fault detection and diagnosis using artificial
intelligence technology.
SHARP's expert system captures knowledge gained by Voyager
experts over the last 12 years and mimics their decisions when
problems arise. That produces quicker response times to mission
anomalies. The system furnishes operators with dynamic graphics
displays for viewing data in a variety of formats. The status of
the spacecraft and ground stations can be determined at a glance
through the use of color-coded displays, which change to reflect
status updates or alarm conditions.
The automation efforts demonstrated in the SHARP system are
designed to enhance the productivity of mission operations in the
years ahead, reducing the workforce required to monitor
spacecraft during critical planetary encounter phases.
The Voyager Project is managed by JPL. NASA's Offices of
Aeronautics and Space Technology and Space Science and
Applications are sponsoring the SHARP demonstration.
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