Unmanned Vehicle Systems Experiences at the Dryden Flight Research Facility

An overview is presented of the remotely piloted research vehicle (RPRV) activities at the NASA Dryden Flight Research Facility from their beginning to the present. The development of RPRV's as flight test tools is discussed, and system configuration is presented. Solutions derived from human factors experience related to flight activities and pilot responses have contributed to overall system capability. The development and use of visual displays, which are a critical feature of successful RPRV flights, are discussed as well as directions for future RPRV efforts

Pilot Workload Measurement and Experience on Supersonic Cruise Aircraft

Aircraft parameters and physiological parameters most indicative of crew workload were investigated. Recommendations were used to form the basis for a continuing study in which variations of the interval between heart beats are used as a measure of nonphysical workload. Preliminary results are presented and current efforts in further defining this physiological measure are outlined

Preliminary experience with a stereoscopic video system in a remotely piloted aircraft application

Remote piloting video display development at the Dryden Flight Research Facility of NASA's Ames Research Center is summarized, and the reasons for considering stereo television are presented. Pertinent equipment is described. Limited flight experience is also discussed, along with recommendations for further study

Environmentally Adjusted Agricultural Productivity in the Great Plains

This study adjusts 1960-1996 agricultural productivity gains in a panel of Great Plains states to account for the discharge of pesticide and nitrogen effluents into the environment. The agricultural-environmental technology is approximated with translog distance functions that allow us to contrast traditional versus environmentally adjusted productivity gains. Findings indicate technical change has been increasingly biased toward environmentally friendly production. While the environmental adjustment reduced overall productivity gains during the sample period, in recent years adjusted productivity outpaced the traditional measure, reflecting the pro-environment bias in technical change.agricultural productivity, distance function, environmental externalities, nitrogen, pesticides, technical change bias, Environmental Economics and Policy, Productivity Analysis,

Visual Systems for Remotely Controlled Vehicles

The Variable Acuity Remote Viewing System is discussed. It was conceived as a technique for resolving the field of view/resolution/ bandwidth tradeoffs that exist in remote viewing systems. This system is based on the fact that integration of the human eye acuity function shows only about 130,000 pixels are required to fully support the human vision. This quantity is well within the capabilities of conventional video systems. The technique utilizes a non-linear optical system in both the sensing and display equipment. The non-linearity is achieved by a special lens which translates a uniform pixel array on its image plane into the object field as a variable angular array. This lens will record the same angular detail the eye would see when viewing the same scene and compress this detail into a uniform matrix of equal sized picture elements on its image plane. This image can be scanned with a broadcast quality tv having a 525 line raster scan. Conventional transmission equipment can then also be used to send the image information to a remote location. When received, the image is projected by a light valve projector onto a hemispherical screen by an identical non-linear lens

Battery powered datalogger

Diplomová práce je zaměřena na problematiku napájení baterií, měření analogových fyzikálních veličin pomocí mikrokontroléru a záznamem dat na paměťovou SD kartu. Bibliografická citace mé práce: REZEK, P. Bateriově napájený analogový datalogger . Brno: Vysoké učení technické v Brně, Fakulta elektrotechniky a komunikačních technologií, 2008. 65 s. Vedoucí diplomové práce Ing. Zdeněk Bradáč, Ph.D.The diploma thesis deals with the questions of battery powering, measuring of analog physical values using microcontroller and recording of data on a memory SD card Bibliographic reference: REZEK, P. Battery powered datalogger. Brno: Brno University of Technology, Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Communication, 2008. 65 p. Supervisor: Ing. Zdeněk Bradáč, Ph.D.

Temporalities in Stone Provisioning in the Middle Paleolithic Stone Artifact Record of the Cave of Pech De L’azé IV in Southwest France; Insights into the Variability in Neandertal Landscape Use

Interpretation of variability in the Middle Paleolithic stone artifact record continues to be one of the major research questions in the Pleistocene archaeology of Europe. Current interpretations of this variability are shifting from culture-historical explanations towards ones related with Neandertal use of the landscape in economic sense: strategies of mobility and resource procurement. These interpretations nonetheless reduce this behavior to one meaning behind a particular set of techno-typological traits in the stone artifact record. Contributing to this problem is the conventional concept of this record as comprised of archaeological assemblages defined on the basis of natural interfaces and perceived as emic entities that contain functionally associated artifacts of time-averaged behavioral events. This dissertation investigates temporalities of processes related to stone provisioning by Neandertals during their use of the cave of Pech de l’Azé IV in south-west France to contribute to understanding the variability in their landscape use from Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 5 until MIS 3 in this region. This stone artifact sequence is sampled by the same number of stone artifacts, following the general history of their accumulation. The analysis examines behavioral processes of stone movement, blank production, tool selection, and tool management, and the dynamics among these processes is used to infer the degree of variability in the use of this place and the degree of variability in the use of stone as components of variability in landscape use. The results show certain patterns in the association between different degrees of variability in landscape use and the three isotope stages and the record of particular techno-typological attributes. During MIS 5, the degree of variability in landscape use fluctuated more than during post-MIS 5 times, when the variability in this behavior was constantly higher. Low variability in landscape use left the record with higher incidences of Levallois elements, while moderate or high variability in this behavior produced the record that is technologically less uniform. Also, until MIS 3, there was a cyclical pattern in the degree of variability in landscape use. Finally, this dissertation argues for the abandonment of the concept of assemblage in stone artifact archaeology