A design for an intelligent monitor and controller for space station electrical power using parallel distributed problem solving

The emphasis is on defining a set of communicating processes for intelligent spacecraft secondary power distribution and control. The computer hardware and software implementation platform for this work is that of the ADEPTS project at the Johnson Space Center (JSC). The electrical power system design which was used as the basis for this research is that of Space Station Freedom, although the functionality of the processes defined here generalize to any permanent manned space power control application. First, the Space Station Electrical Power Subsystem (EPS) hardware to be monitored is described, followed by a set of scenarios describing typical monitor and control activity. Then, the parallel distributed problem solving approach to knowledge engineering is introduced. There follows a two-step presentation of the intelligent software design for secondary power control. The first step decomposes the problem of monitoring and control into three primary functions. Each of the primary functions is described in detail. Suggestions for refinements and embelishments in design specifications are given

Making intelligent systems team players: Case studies and design issues. Volume 1: Human-computer interaction design

Initial results are reported from a multi-year, interdisciplinary effort to provide guidance and assistance for designers of intelligent systems and their user interfaces. The objective is to achieve more effective human-computer interaction (HCI) for systems with real time fault management capabilities. Intelligent fault management systems within the NASA were evaluated for insight into the design of systems with complex HCI. Preliminary results include: (1) a description of real time fault management in aerospace domains; (2) recommendations and examples for improving intelligent systems design and user interface design; (3) identification of issues requiring further research; and (4) recommendations for a development methodology integrating HCI design into intelligent system design

An intelligent, free-flying robot

The ground based demonstration of the extensive extravehicular activity (EVA) Retriever, a voice-supervised, intelligent, free flying robot, is designed to evaluate the capability to retrieve objects (astronauts, equipment, and tools) which have accidentally separated from the Space Station. The major objective of the EVA Retriever Project is to design, develop, and evaluate an integrated robotic hardware and on-board software system which autonomously: (1) performs system activation and check-out; (2) searches for and acquires the target; (3) plans and executes a rendezvous while continuously tracking the target; (4) avoids stationary and moving obstacles; (5) reaches for and grapples the target; (6) returns to transfer the object; and (7) returns to base

Federated Embedded Systems – a review of the literature in related fields

This report is concerned with the vision of smart interconnected objects, a vision that has attracted much attention lately. In this paper, embedded, interconnected, open, and heterogeneous control systems are in focus, formally referred to as Federated Embedded Systems. To place FES into a context, a review of some related research directions is presented. This review includes such concepts as systems of systems, cyber-physical systems, ubiquitous computing, internet of things, and multi-agent systems. Interestingly, the reviewed fields seem to overlap with each other in an increasing number of ways

Automation and robotics human performance

The scope of this report is limited to the following: (1) assessing the feasibility of the assumptions for crew productivity during the intra-vehicular activities and extra-vehicular activities; (2) estimating the appropriate level of automation and robotics to accomplish balanced man-machine, cost-effective operations in space; (3) identifying areas where conceptually different approaches to the use of people and machines can leverage the benefits of the scenarios; and (4) recommending modifications to scenarios or developing new scenarios that will improve the expected benefits. The FY89 special assessments are grouped into the five categories shown in the report. The high level system analyses for Automation & Robotics (A&R) and Human Performance (HP) were performed under the Case Studies Technology Assessment category, whereas the detailed analyses for the critical systems and high leverage development areas were performed under the appropriate operations categories (In-Space Vehicle Operations or Planetary Surface Operations). The analysis activities planned for the Science Operations technology areas were deferred to FY90 studies. The remaining activities such as analytic tool development, graphics/video demonstrations and intelligent communicating systems software architecture were performed under the Simulation & Validations category

Application of multi-agents to power distribution systems

The electric power system has become a very complicated network at present because of re-structuring and the penetration of distributed energy resources. In addition, due to increasing demand for power, issues such as transmission congestion have made the power system stressed. A single fault can lead to massive cascading effects, affecting the power supply and power quality. An overall solution for these issues can be obtained by a new artificial intelligent mechanism called the multi-agent system. A multi-agent system is a collection of agents, which senses the environmental changes and acts diligently on the environment in order to achieve its objectives. Due to the increasing speed and decreasing cost in communication and computation of complex matrices, multi-agent system promise to be a viable solution for today\u27s intrinsic network problems.;A multi-agent system model for fault detection and reconfiguration is presented in this thesis. These models are developed based on graph theory and mathematical programming. A mathematical model is developed to specify the objective function and the constraints.;The multi-agent models are simulated in Java Agent Development Framework and MatlabRTM and are applied to the power system model designed in the commercial software, Distributed Engineering Workstation(c) . The circuit that is used to model the power distribution system is the Circuit of the Future, developed by Southern California Edison.;The multi-agent system model can precisely detect the fault location and according to the type of fault, it reconfigures the system to supply as much load as possible by satisfying the power balance and line capacity constraints. The model is also capable of handling the assignment of load priorities.;All possible fault cases were tested and a few critical test scenarios are presented in this thesis. The results obtained were promising and were as expected

Dynamic learning of the environment for eco-citizen behavior

Le développement de villes intelligentes et durables nécessite le déploiement des technologies de l'information et de la communication (ITC) pour garantir de meilleurs services et informations disponibles à tout moment et partout. Comme les dispositifs IoT devenant plus puissants et moins coûteux, la mise en place d'un réseau de capteurs dans un contexte urbain peut être coûteuse. Cette thèse propose une technique pour estimer les informations environnementales manquantes dans des environnements à large échelle. Notre technique permet de fournir des informations alors que les dispositifs ne sont pas disponibles dans une zone de l'environnement non couverte par des capteurs. La contribution de notre proposition est résumée dans les points suivants : - limiter le nombre de dispositifs de détection à déployer dans un environnement urbain ; - l'exploitation de données hétérogènes acquises par des dispositifs intermittents ; - le traitement en temps réel des informations ; - l'auto-calibration du système. Notre proposition utilise l'approche AMAS (Adaptive Multi-Agent System) pour résoudre le problème de l'indisponibilité des informations. Dans cette approche, une exception est considérée comme une situation non coopérative (NCS) qui doit être résolue localement et de manière coopérative. HybridIoT exploite à la fois des informations homogènes (informations du même type) et hétérogènes (informations de différents types ou unités) acquises à partir d'un capteur disponible pour fournir des estimations précises au point de l'environnement où un capteur n'est pas disponible. La technique proposée permet d'estimer des informations environnementales précises dans des conditions de variabilité résultant du contexte d'application urbaine dans lequel le projet est situé, et qui n'ont pas été explorées par les solutions de l'état de l'art : - ouverture : les capteurs peuvent entrer ou sortir du système à tout moment sans qu'aucune configuration particulière soit nécessaire ; - large échelle : le système peut être déployé dans un contexte urbain à large échelle et assurer un fonctionnement correct avec un nombre significatif de dispositifs ; - hétérogénéité : le système traite différents types d'informations sans aucune configuration a priori. Notre proposition ne nécessite aucun paramètre d'entrée ni aucune reconfiguration. Le système peut fonctionner dans des environnements ouverts et dynamiques tels que les villes, où un grand nombre de capteurs peuvent apparaître ou disparaître à tout moment et sans aucun préavis. Nous avons fait différentes expérimentations pour comparer les résultats obtenus à plusieurs techniques standard afin d'évaluer la validité de notre proposition. Nous avons également développé un ensemble de techniques standard pour produire des résultats de base qui seront comparés à ceux obtenus par notre proposition multi-agents.The development of sustainable smart cities requires the deployment of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) to ensure better services and available information at any time and everywhere. As IoT devices become more powerful and low-cost, the implementation of an extensive sensor network for an urban context can be expensive. This thesis proposes a technique for estimating missing environmental information in large scale environments. Our technique enables providing information whereas devices are not available for an area of the environment not covered by sensing devices. The contribution of our proposal is summarized in the following points: * limiting the number of sensing devices to be deployed in an urban environment; * the exploitation of heterogeneous data acquired from intermittent devices; * real-time processing of information; * self-calibration of the system. Our proposal uses the Adaptive Multi-Agent System (AMAS) approach to solve the problem of information unavailability. In this approach, an exception is considered as a Non-Cooperative Situation (NCS) that has to be solved locally and cooperatively. HybridIoT exploits both homogeneous (information of the same type) and heterogeneous information (information of different types or units) acquired from some available sensing device to provide accurate estimates in the point of the environment where a sensing device is not available. The proposed technique enables estimating accurate environmental information under conditions of uncertainty arising from the urban application context in which the project is situated, and which have not been explored by the state-of-the-art solutions: * openness: sensors can enter or leave the system at any time without the need for any reconfiguration; * large scale: the system can be deployed in a large, urban context and ensure correct operation with a significative number of devices; * heterogeneity: the system handles different types of information without any a priori configuration. Our proposal does not require any input parameters or reconfiguration. The system can operate in open, dynamic environments such as cities, where a large number of sensing devices can appear or disappear at any time and without any prior notification. We carried out different experiments to compare the obtained results to various standard techniques to assess the validity of our proposal. We also developed a pipeline of standard techniques to produce baseline results that will be compared to those obtained by our multi-agent proposal

Multiagent autonomous energy management

The objective of this thesis is to design distributed software agents for reliable operation of integrated electric power systems of modern electric warships. The automatic reconfiguration of electric shipboard power systems is an important step toward improved fight-through and self-healing capabilities of naval warships. The improvements are conceptualized by redesigning the electric power system and its controls. This research focuses on a new scheme for an energy management system in the form of distributed control/software agents. Multiagent systems provide an ideal level of abstraction for modeling complex applications where distributed and heterogeneous entities need to cooperate to achieve a common goal. The agents\u27 task is to ensure supply of the various load demands while taking into consideration system constraints and load and supply path priorities. A self-stabilizing maximum flow algorithm is investigated to allow implementation of the agents\u27 strategies and find a global solution by only considering local information and a minimum amount of communication. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)