NASA space station automation: AI-based technology review

Research and Development projects in automation for the Space Station are discussed. Artificial Intelligence (AI) based automation technologies are planned to enhance crew safety through reduced need for EVA, increase crew productivity through the reduction of routine operations, increase space station autonomy, and augment space station capability through the use of teleoperation and robotics. AI technology will also be developed for the servicing of satellites at the Space Station, system monitoring and diagnosis, space manufacturing, and the assembly of large space structures

Smart Grid Technologies in Europe: An Overview

The old electricity network infrastructure has proven to be inadequate, with respect to modern challenges such as alternative energy sources, electricity demand and energy saving policies. Moreover, Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) seem to have reached an adequate level of reliability and flexibility in order to support a new concept of electricity network—the smart grid. In this work, we will analyse the state-of-the-art of smart grids, in their technical, management, security, and optimization aspects. We will also provide a brief overview of the regulatory aspects involved in the development of a smart grid, mainly from the viewpoint of the European Unio

Hosting critical infrastructure services in the cloud environment considerations

Critical infrastructure technology vendors will inevitability take advantage of the benefits offered by the cloud computing paradigm. While this may offer improved performance and scalability, the associated security threats impede this progression. Hosting critical infrastructure services in the cloud environment may seem inane to some, but currently remote access to the control system over the internet is commonplace. This shares the same characteristics as cloud computing, i.e., on-demand access and resource pooling. There is a wealth of data used within critical infrastructure. There needs to be an assurance that the confidentiality, integrity and availability of this data remains. Authenticity and non-repudiation are also important security requirements for critical infrastructure systems. This paper provides an overview of critical infrastructure and the cloud computing relationship, whilst detailing security concerns and existing protection methods. Discussion on the direction of the area is presented, as is a survey of current protection methods and their weaknesses. Finally, we present our observation and our current research into hosting critical infrastructure services in the cloud environment, and the considerations for detecting cloud attacks. © 2015 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd

Neural-Network-Based State Feedback Control of a Nonlinear Discrete-Time System in Nonstrict Feedback Form

In this paper, a suite of adaptive neural network (NN) controllers is designed to deliver a desired tracking performance for the control of an unknown, second-order, nonlinear discrete-time system expressed in nonstrict feedback form. In the first approach, two feedforward NNs are employed in the controller with tracking error as the feedback variable whereas in the adaptive critic NN architecture, three feedforward NNs are used. In the adaptive critic architecture, two action NNs produce virtual and actual control inputs, respectively, whereas the third critic NN approximates certain strategic utility function and its output is employed for tuning action NN weights in order to attain the near-optimal control action. Both the NN control methods present a well-defined controller design and the noncausal problem in discrete-time backstepping design is avoided via NN approximation. A comparison between the controller methodologies is highlighted. The stability analysis of the closed-loop control schemes is demonstrated. The NN controller schemes do not require an offline learning phase and the NN weights can be initialized at zero or random. Results show that the performance of the proposed controller schemes is highly satisfactory while meeting the closed-loop stability