Advancing automation and robotics technology for the Space Station Freedom and for the US economy

In April 1985, as required by Public Law 98-371, the NASA Advanced Technology Advisory Committee (ATAC) reported to Congress the results of its studies on advanced automation and robotics technology for use on the Freedom space station. This material was documented in the initial report (NASA Technical Memorandum 87566). A further requirement of the law was that ATAC follow NASA's progress in this area and report to Congress semiannually. This report is the seventh in a series of progress updates and covers the period between April 1, 1988 and September 30, 1988. NASA has accepted the basic recommendations of ATAC for its Space Station Freedom efforts. ATAC and NASA agree that the thrust of Congress is to build an advanced automation and robotics technology base that will support an evolutionary Space Station Freedom program and serve as a highly visible stimulator, affecting the U.S. long-term economy. The progress report identifies the work of NASA and the Freedom study contractors. It also describes research in progress, and it makes assessments of the advancement of automation and robotics technology on the Freedom space station

Relieving the cognitive load of constructing molecular biological ontology based queries by means of visual aids.

Thesis (M.Comp.Sc.)-Universty of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2007.The domain of molecular biology is complex and vast. Bio-ontologies and information visualisation have arisen in recent years as means to assist biologists in making sense of this information. Ontologies can enable the construction of conceptual queries, but existing systems to do this are too technical for most biologists. OntoDas, the software developed as part of this thesis work, demonstrates how the application of techniques from information visualisation and human computer interaction can result in software which enables biologists to construct conceptual queries

Combining Vision Verification with a High Level Robot Programming Language

This thesis describes work on using vision verification within an object level language for describing robot assembly (RAPT). The motivation for this thesis is provided by two problems. The first is how to enhance a high level robot programming language so that it can encompass vision commands to locate workpieces of an assembly. The second is how to find a way of making full use of sensory information to update the robot system's knowledge about the environment. The work described in this thesis consists of three parts: (1) adding vision commands into the RAPT input language so that the user can specify vision verification tasks; (2) implementing a symbolic geometrical reasoning system so that vision data can be reasoned about symbolically at compile time in order to speed up run time operations; (3) providing a framework which enables the RAPT system to make full use of the sensory information. The vision commands allow partial information about positions to be combined with sensory information in a general way, and the symbolic reasoning system allows much of the reasoning work about vision information to be done before the actual information is obtained. The framework combines a verification vision facility with an object level language in an intelligent way so that all ramifications of the effects of sensory data are taken account of. The heart of the framework is the modifying factor array. The position of each object is expressed as the product of two parts: the planned position and the difference between this and "he actual one. This difference, referred to as the modifying factor of an object, is stored in the modifying factor array. The planned position is described by the user in the usual way in a RAPT program and its value is inferred by the RAPT reasoning system. Modifying factors of objects whose positions are directly verified are defined at compile time as symbolic expressions containing variables whose value will become known at run time. The modifying factors of other objects (not directly verified) may be dependent upon positions of objects which are verified. At compile time the framework reasons about the influence of the sensory information on the objects which are not verified directly by the vision system, and establishes connections among modifying factors of objects in each situation. This framework makes the representation of the influence of vision information on the robot's knowledge of the environment compact and simple. All the programming has been done. It has been tested with simulated data and works successfully

Impacts of Artificial Intelligence

This book, which is intended to serve as the first stage in an iterative process of detecting, predicting, and assessing the impacts of Artificial Intelligence opens with a short "one-hour course" in AI, which is intended to provide a nontechnical informative introduction to the material which follows. Next comes an overview chapter which is based on an extensive literature search, the position papers, and discussions. The next section of the book contains position papers whose richness and diversity illustrate the wealth of opinions and research directions that today fall under the umbrella term "AI research". The papers are followed by a select bibliography containing nearly 700 books, articles, and research memoranda on AI-related topics, together with a thesaurus and KWIC index to facilitate the retrieval of information. The book closes with and index and two appendices, one listing the names and addresses of the contributing scientists and the other giving details of the AI curriculum at the University of Vienna