Computer vision research at Marshall Space Flight Center

Orbital docking, inspection, and sevicing are operations which have the potential for capability enhancement as well as cost reduction for space operations by the application of computer vision technology. Research at MSFC has been a natural outgrowth of orbital docking simulations for remote manually controlled vehicles such as the Teleoperator Retrieval System and the Orbital Maneuvering Vehicle (OMV). Baseline design of the OMV dictates teleoperator control from a ground station. This necessitates a high data-rate communication network and results in several seconds of time delay. Operational costs and vehicle control difficulties could be alleviated by an autonomous or semi-autonomous control system onboard the OMV which would be based on a computer vision system having capability to recognize video images in real time. A concept under development at MSFC with these attributes is based on syntactic pattern recognition. It uses tree graphs for rapid recognition of binary images of known orbiting target vehicles. This technique and others being investigated at MSFC will be evaluated in realistic conditions by the use of MSFC orbital docking simulators. Computer vision is also being applied at MSFC as part of the supporting development for Work Package One of Space Station Freedom

Our Midwests

When I was teaching American Studies and Literature courses in “The Midwest,” I’d always began with a survey, asking students to indicate where they thought the Midwest was located on the map, what its main characteristics were, what its people were like, etc. I was always amazed at how little my students knew about the questions, or about the differences between such things as urban and rural. Their home area was indeed what Eric Sevareid once called “a blank on the nation’s mind.” It’s indeed time for all of us to escape the stereotypes and know more about the places we call home—their history, their distinctiveness, their richness and those who have contributed to it

Escaping Cupcake Land

Even though America is made up of many distinct regions, the homogenization of our culture is causing us to lose any meaningful sense of place, which includes history and literature (which have been inseparably linked in the past). A case in point is the part of Kansas City known as “The Plaza” and the surrounding suburbs on the Kansas side of the state line, as chronicled by Richard Rhodes in his book Inland Ground: An Evocation of the American Middle West (revised edition, 1991). Rhodes and others remind us that Wallace Stegner’s dictum “I may not know who I am but I know where I’m from” has disappeared for many of us

Writing with a Chip on Your Shoulder: Some Notes on Regionalism

Unfortunately, many Midwestern writers are used to being labeled “regional” in a pejorative sense. In the past, many have indeed left the Midwest because the region offered far fewer possibilities than the coasts (e.g., Hemingway, Cather, Lewis, and Fitzgerald). Thanks to such things as the development of literary small presses and MFA and history programs, this has begun to change—witness such important writers as Ted Kooser and Louise Erdrich who have stayed in the Midwest and written about the richness of material they find right here at “home.” More than ever, we—writers and readers alike—need to realize the positive (and complex) sides of “regionalism,” to rid ourselves of the “chips” that have been many years in the making