The Galileo PPS expert monitoring and diagnostic prototype

The Galileo PPS Expert Monitoring Module (EMM) is a prototype system implemented on the SUN workstation that will demonstrate a knowledge-based approach to monitoring and diagnosis for the Galileo spacecraft Power/Pyro subsystems. The prototype will simulate an analysis module functioning within the SFOC Engineering Analysis Subsystem Environment (EASE). This document describes the implementation of a prototype EMM for the Galileo spacecraft Power Pyro Subsystem. Section 2 of this document provides an overview of the issues in monitoring and diagnosis and comparison between traditional and knowledge-based solutions to this problem. Section 3 describes various tradeoffs which must be considered when designing a knowledge-based approach to monitoring and diagnosis, and section 4 discusses how these issues were resolved in constructing the prototype. Section 5 presents conclusions and recommendations for constructing a full-scale demonstration of the EMM. A Glossary provides definitions of terms used in this text

An analysis of Space Shuttle countdown activities: Preliminaries to a computational model of the NASA Test Director

Before all systems are go just prior to the launch of a space shuttle, thousands of operations and tests have been performed to ensure that all shuttle and support subsystems are operational and ready for launch. These steps, which range from activating the orbiter's flight computers to removing the launch pad from the itinerary of the NASA tour buses, are carried out by launch team members at various locations and with highly specialized fields of expertise. The liability for coordinating these diverse activities rests with the NASA Test Director (NTD) at NASA-Kennedy. The behavior is being studied of the NTD with the goal of building a detailed computational model of that behavior; the results of that analysis to date are given. The NTD's performance is described in detail, as a team member who must coordinate a complex task through efficient audio communication, as well as an individual taking notes and consulting manuals. A model of the routine cognitive skill used by the NTD to follow the launch countdown procedure manual was implemented using the Soar cognitive architecture. Several examples are given of how such a model could aid in evaluating proposed computer support systems

Network Kriging

Network service providers and customers are often concerned with aggregate performance measures that span multiple network paths. Unfortunately, forming such network-wide measures can be difficult, due to the issues of scale involved. In particular, the number of paths grows too rapidly with the number of endpoints to make exhaustive measurement practical. As a result, it is of interest to explore the feasibility of methods that dramatically reduce the number of paths measured in such situations while maintaining acceptable accuracy. We cast the problem as one of statistical prediction--in the spirit of the so-called `kriging' problem in spatial statistics--and show that end-to-end network properties may be accurately predicted in many cases using a surprisingly small set of carefully chosen paths. More precisely, we formulate a general framework for the prediction problem, propose a class of linear predictors for standard quantities of interest (e.g., averages, totals, differences) and show that linear algebraic methods of subset selection may be used to effectively choose which paths to measure. We characterize the performance of the resulting methods, both analytically and numerically. The success of our methods derives from the low effective rank of routing matrices as encountered in practice, which appears to be a new observation in its own right with potentially broad implications on network measurement generally.Comment: 16 pages, 9 figures, single-space

A dynamical ocean feedback mechanism for the Madden-Julian Oscillation

Composite analysis is applied to study the dynamical ocean response to Madden-Julian (MJ) events, measured by anomalies in sea surface height from the merged TOPEX/Poseidon-European Remote Sensing satellite altimetry dataset. In each of the tropical ocean basins, significant equatorial waves are forced, which are shown to modulate the sea surface temperature (SST) by 0.2-0.3 degC in the absence of strong surface heat fluxes. In the Indian Ocean there is a clear dynamical response which may play a significant role in generating later MJ events. Surface westerly winds, associated with the active phase of the Madden-Julian Oscillation (MJO), force an eastward-propagating oceanic downwelling equatorial Kelvin wave, which, on reaching the eastern boundary at Sumatra, forces reflected downwelling equatorial Rossby waves and coastal Kelvin waves. The coastal Kelvin waves propagate southwards towards northern Australia and northwards into the Bay of Bengal, and will be important for local physical, chemical and biological processes. The equatorial Rossby waves propagate westward across the Indian Ocean, arriving in the western Indian Ocean approximately 80-100 days after the initial Kelvin wave was generated. The arrival of these waves generates positive SST anomalies which leads to convection and may trigger the next-but-one MJ event, or amplify the low-frequency tail of the MJO. This constitutes a coupled feedback mechanism from the ocean dynamics onto the MJO, somewhat similar to the delayed oscillator mechanism for the El Nino Southern Oscillation

Design criteria for flight evaluation. Monograph 4 - Control system evaluation

Methods and analyses for flight evaluation of control systems for multistage launch vehicle

Are developmental disorders like cases of adult brain damage? Implications from connectionist modelling

It is often assumed that similar domain-specific behavioural impairments found in cases of adult brain damage and developmental disorders correspond to similar underlying causes, and can serve as convergent evidence for the modular structure of the normal adult cognitive system. We argue that this correspondence is contingent on an unsupported assumption that atypical development can produce selective deficits while the rest of the system develops normally (Residual Normality), and that this assumption tends to bias data collection in the field. Based on a review of connectionist models of acquired and developmental disorders in the domains of reading and past tense, as well as on new simulations, we explore the computational viability of Residual Normality and the potential role of development in producing behavioural deficits. Simulations demonstrate that damage to a developmental model can produce very different effects depending on whether it occurs prior to or following the training process. Because developmental disorders typically involve damage prior to learning, we conclude that the developmental process is a key component of the explanation of endstate impairments in such disorders. Further simulations demonstrate that in simple connectionist learning systems, the assumption of Residual Normality is undermined by processes of compensation or alteration elsewhere in the system. We outline the precise computational conditions required for Residual Normality to hold in development, and suggest that in many cases it is an unlikely hypothesis. We conclude that in developmental disorders, inferences from behavioural deficits to underlying structure crucially depend on developmental conditions, and that the process of ontogenetic development cannot be ignored in constructing models of developmental disorders