Systems Engineering Principles and the Challenges in Deriving Them

No abstract availabl

Identifying and Analyzing Astronomers\u27 Preferences for the Next Decade of NASA

In our research, we investigated the preferences of students and professionals in the astronomy and astrophysics communities to better understand what space-based missions and research activities the scientific community would most likely prioritize for the NASA Decadal Survey. The decadal is conducted by the United States National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine to address past and present research as well as changes in civil policy, new programs, and how the community may respond to the results, among other topics of interest. The aim of the current research is to survey preferences in the astronomy and astrophysics community to better understand individual and community factors and present results on mission concepts, mission capabilities, and primary science. Understanding individual and group preferences can help researchers project likely outcomes for the coming decade to better inform industry and academia stakeholders on what mission concepts the community will be most likely to support. Every project is multi-faceted; therefore, knowing the community’s interests provides the ability to show how a mission concept meets the needs of the group while simultaneously protecting their values as well. We aim to contribute knowledge about the nature of the preferences held by individuals in the community and the amount of consensus between subgroups in the astronomy and astrophysics community. The study was performed using a survey methodology to collect a total of 796 responses. Participants were a convenience sample of members from the astronomy and astrophysics community who attended the June 2018 AAS conference in Denver or the January 2019 AAS conference in Seattle. The researchers described two contextual community subgroups by their direct involvement in space-based missions and found that most did not have any prior experience. From the responses, topics were then classified into similar subthemes generating 9 overarching themes. We implemented thematic analysis to identify patterns across the qualitative open-ended responses and evaluated preferences by their prioritized astrophysics missions and research activities. Our results revealed strong community preferences for observational astronomy and science versatility, capability, and scientific return for the upcoming decadal period. Furthermore, our findings show degrees of consensus among subgroups of the scientific community. We present results on mission concepts, mission capabilities, and primary science that NASA should consider strategically investing in for the future of astrophysics and astronomy research

An Effective Transfer Learning Based Landmark Detection Framework For UAV-Based Aerial Imagery Of Urban Landscapes

Aerial imagery captured through airborne sensors mounted on Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), aircrafts, satellites, etc. in the form of RGB, LiDAR, multispectral or hyperspectral images provide a unique perspective for a variety of applications. These sensors capture high-resolution images that can be used for applications related to mapping, surveying, and monitoring of crops, infrastructure, and natural resources. Deep learning based algorithms are often the forerunners in facilitating practical solutions for such data-centric applications. Deep learning-based landmark detection is one such application which involves the use of deep learning algorithms to accurately identify and locate landmarks of interest in images captured through UAVs. This study proposes an efficient transfer learning method for feature extraction using a ResNet50 architecture, paired with a FasterRCNN object detection for an automated landmark detection framework. Additionally, a novel technique for hierarchical image annotation and synthetic sampling is also introduced to address the issue of class imbalance. Empirical results prove that our proposed approach outperforms other state-of-the-art landmark detection methodologies compared

Engineering Elegant Systems: Postulates, Principles, and Hypotheses of Systems Engineering

No abstract availabl

Formation, Implementation, and Verification of Requirements for Human-Autonomy Teaming

A Quad, describing funded research.Consortium for Robotics and Unmanned Systems Education and Research (CRUSER

Student Perspectives of Affordability for Workforce Onboarding

Affordability is often a high priority within organizations as many organizations strive to maximize output capabilities while minimizing the cost of operations. In order to operate with affordability as an organizational goal, members must work together as a cohesive unit to ensure processes and behaviors reflect this goal. While those further along in their careers may be more familiar with organizational aspects such as organizational goals, organizational culture, and organizational climate, those with limited experience may not be aware of these fundamentally important concepts. The goal of the current study was to examine perceptions of affordability given by currently employed students in order to understand how those in the exploration stage of their career view affordability in organizations. Students from The University of Alabama in Huntsville (N = 143) responded to a survey featuring both free response and Likert-type questions regarding currently held beliefs surrounding affordability and organizational culture. Results from this study indicated that students are often unaware of the concept of organizational culture and climate, and this lack of familiarity may potentially lead to organization members distancing themselves from understanding their individual impact to organizational processes. In addition, students view affordability in terms of budgets and funding, often not taking into consideration organizational behaviors that may indirectly influence the overall affordability of a project or program. These perceptions may be used to inform organizations of how best to tailor onboarding processes in order to familiarize newly hired organization members with their individual impact to an organization as well as their role within a larger organizational unit

Marsbee - Swarm of Flapping Wing Flyers for Enhanced Mars Exploration

Mars exploration has received significant interest from academia, industry, government, and the general public. Despite continued interest, flying on Mars remains challenging, mainly due to the ultra-thin Martian atmospheric density. Although the gravitational acceleration on Mars is 38 percent of Earth's 9.8 meters per second squared, the Martian atmospheric density is only 1.3 percent of the air density on Earth. The aerodynamic forces are proportional to the ambient fluid density. Therefore, flying near the surface of Mars has been considered nearly impossible. The proposed mission architecture (Fig. 1) consists of a Mars rover (already existing) that serves as a mobile base for Marsbees - a deployable swarm of small bio-inspired flapping wing vehicles. In one ConOps scenario, each Marsbee would carry an integrated stereographic video camera and the swarm could construct a 3D topographic map of the local surface for rover path planning. These flying scouts would provide a "third-dimension" to the rover capabilities. In other scenarios, each part of the swarm of Marsbees could carry pressure and temperature sensors for atmospheric sampling, or small spectral analyzers for identification of mineral outcroppings. In each scenario, the rover acts as a recharging and deployment/return station and data and communication hub. Human exploration of Mars is one of the major objectives of NASA and commercial entities such as SpaceX and Boeing. The identified innovations unique to the bio-inspired flapping Marsbee provide viable multi-mode flying mobility for Martian atmospheric and terrain exploration. A swarm of Marsbees provides an enhanced reconfigurable Mars exploration system that is resilient to individual component failures. These Marsbees can carry sensors and wireless communication devices in combination with a Mars rover and helicopters. These enhanced sensing and information gathering abilities can contribute to the following NASA Mars mission objectives: i) "Determine the habitability of an environment", ii) "Obtain surface weather measurements to validate global atmospheric models", and iii) "Prepare for human exploration on Mars." Various commercial entities, e.g. SpaceX and Boeing, are investing in technologies to transport humans to Mars

Incorporation of Decision and Game Theories in Early-Stage Complex Product Design to Model End-Use

The need for design models that accurately capture the complexities of products increase as products grow ever more complicated. The accuracies of these models depend upon the inputs and the methods used on those inputs to determine an output. Product designers must determine the dominant inputs and make assumptions concerning inputs that have less of an effect. Properly capturing the important inputs in the early design stages, where designs are being simulated, allows for modifications of the design at a relatively low cost. In this dissertation, an input that has a high impact on product performance but is usually neglected until later design stages is examined. The end-users of a product interact with the product and with each other in ways that affect the performance of that product. End-users are typically brought in at the later design stages, or as representations on the design team. They are rarely used as input variables in the product models. By incorporating the end-users in the early models and simulations, the end-users' impact on performance are captured when modifications to the designs are cheaper. The methodology of capturing end-user decision making in product models, developed in this dissertation, is created using the methods of decision and game theory. These theories give a mathematical basis for decision making based on the end-users' beliefs and preferences. Due to the variations that are present in end-users' preferences, their interactions with the product cause variations in the performance. This dissertation shows that capturing the end-user interactions in simulations enables the designer to create products that are more robust to the variations of the end-users. The manipulation of a game that an individual plays to drive an outcome desired by a designer is referred to as mechanism design. This dissertation also shows how a designer can influence the end-users' decisions to optimize the designer's goals. How product controlled information, data in which end-users use to modify their beliefs, can be manipulated by the designer to drive the product to a desired performance is discussed in this dissertation. This dissertation explores multiple examples of how designers can optimize product robustness to end-users and how the designer can use mechanism design on end-users in a product. In order to provide simulated examples of robustness and mechanism design in products with end-users, a complex product simulator is created with end-user interactions modeled using decision and game theory. The products used in this dissertation are that of a building and of an aircraft, with a focus on the structure's evacuations. The model created in this dissertation, Vacate-GT, captures the interactions of the end-users, being the evacuees. The interactions captured are the end-users' exit path selection and velocity vector selection, resulting in a movement decision. This dissertation develops methodologies using decision and game theory to capture these decisions. Vacate-GT is validated against experimental data of building and aircraft evacuations, showing that the end-users' decisions in an evacuation can be accurately modeled using decision and game theory. The validations show how the use of decision and game theories in evacuation simulators result in natural value driven models where individual and group behaviors emerge. Vacate-GT is used to provide simulated examples of how a designer can optimize product robustness to end-user variations and manipulate end-user information to optimize performance. The dissertation shows how end-users can be modeled to create a more accurate product model. Examples using Vacate-GT provide numerical evidence that the use of decision and game theories to incorporate end-user uncertainties into models enables the designer to create more robust products. The simulated examples also show how mechanism design enables the designer to optimize their product goal

Agent-Based Simulation of Hardware-Intensive Design Teams Using the Function–Behavior–Structure Framework

Agile processes have been used in software development, with many case studies indicating positive changes in productivity when these processes are used. Agile processes are beginning to be applied to work beyond software-centric systems. There does not yet exist a diverse set of studies on the effectiveness of Agile processes on hardware-intensive systems. The research in this article applies a modeling and simulation-based approach which uses the function–behavior–structure framework to evaluate the effectiveness of waterfall and Agile processes. The simulation was validated against case studies of software-centric design efforts. When applied to a space launch vehicle—a highly coupled, hardware-intensive system—the simulation shows that the benefits of Agile may not be as great as those seen with software-intensive systems

Trends in Occurrences of Systems Engineering Topics in Literature

Examining past research using content analysis can provide detailed information about the trends a discipline has displayed over years or decades. Disciplines such as software engineering and hospitality management have used methods for analyzing topic frequencies in the past. This paper uses similar methods to study the presence of systems engineering topics in literature to understand the occurrence of approaches and metrics in the community over time. This paper reviews the trends of systems engineering topics over the years 1998–2016 by performing a content analysis of four systems engineering and design engineering journals. A mathematical analysis of the trends is performed using rank ordering and a rank correlation metric. The study shows that model-based approaches have grown significantly since the early 2000s, as advocated in the INOCSE MBSE initiative, while other approaches such as Taguchi’s method and axiomatic design have been seen less frequently in literature. Systems engineering metrics that have been frequently seen in literature include complexity, reliability, and quality. The results from this research provide a portrait of the systems engineering landscape