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Intelligent Flight Support System (IFSS)A Real-Time Intelligent Decision Support Prototype

PRESENTER/COTRAnthony Bruins (X37071)

HPN Software Consultant, Inc.

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“To understand and protect our home planet, to explore the universe and search for life, and to inspire the next generation of explorers” is

NASA’s mission.

The MCCS system’s vision lists the Mission Operations Directorate (MOD) goals as:

● Making MCCS software and data readily accessible to users regardless of location, ● Facilitating the distribution of data across platforms to local and remote users, ● allowing concurrent access to multiple security levels depending on roles, tasks and needs, ● Employing intuitive and standard user interfaces to the platforms and tools.● Employing intuitive 3D visualization.

IFSS enables MOD to meet all of these goals

In addition, IFSS can support the key elements of the new Exploration Policy such as Space Shuttle, International Space Station, Crew Exploration Vehicle, Lunar Exploration, Mars Exploration, and Other Solar System Exploration.

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The IFSS user interface highlights two distinct data and intelligent components. The data component provides FCs with all currently used displays at MCC while the intelligent component is used to provide the FCs with what-if, goal-seeking and graphing capabilities. An expert system is embedded in the intelligent component allowing FCs to perform more sophisticated analysis, such as dual angle operations, feathering for docking, shadow analysis, auto tracking. What gives this proposed software product its power is the following features:

What if Analysis: What-if analysis is a trial-and-error method that determines the impact of changes in decision variables and assumptions.

Goal-Seeking: Goal-seeking will allow the users to determine the required value of a parameter to achieve some predetermined target, for example the solar channel angle for a given attitude (yaw, pitch, and roll) needed to provide a desired secondary output for a solar channel.

Expert System: The expert system to be embedded in the intelligent component is a rule-based system that will be designed and developed to provide users with advice concerning various tasks such as dual angle operations or shadow analysis.

The IFSS User Interface

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A Sample Graphical User Interface Screen Shot of the Current Flight Control System

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IFSS Menu System Graphical User Interface Screen Shot

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Situational and Contextual Awareness: “What-if” Analysis Graphical User Interface Screen Shot

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Situational and Contextual Awareness: “Goal-seeking” Graphical User Interface Screen Shot

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Information vs. Data: Graphical User Interface Screen Shot

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Real Time Prediction: Rule-based Expert System Graphical User Interface Screen Shot

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The Median Scores for the IFSS Evaluation Questionnaire Given to 24 FCs and FDs

IFSS was evaluated by 24 FCs and FDs and they rate the system favorably on the following criteria on a 0 to 8 scale:

Evaluation IFSS Preference over the CURRENT System CURRENT System Preference over IFSS

Criteria 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

Effectiveness 7.0 Systems 6.0 Flexibility 5.0 Access 4.0 Connectivity 3.0 Change 2.0 Cost 1.0

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Conclusion

The IFSS has enabled the FCs to visualize, analyze, and communicate information and knowledge associated with the various aspects of space operations and telemetry data. The overall goal of IFSS is to maximize accuracy and minimize effort. The fusion of telemetry data and decision support models into one visualization environment enables FCs to understand the cross dependencies of multidisciplinary data and make invisible and transient information visible and sustainable. Also, the IFSS provides a platform allowing the FC’s process information in parallel automatically, and unconsciously by bypassing the bottleneck of human working memory that is limited in capacity. In addition, the real-time visualization provides FCs with quick assessment of operational problems and enables them to allocate proper resources to investigate a particular scenario in more detail.