Title

NESTA: NASA Engineering Shuttle Telemetry Agent

Authors

Authors

G. S. Semmel; S. R. Davis; K. W. Leucht; D. A. Rowe; K. E. Smith; R. O'Farrell;L. Boloni

Comments

Authors: contact us about adding a copy of your work at STARS@ucf.edu

Abbreviated Journal Title

AI Mag.

Keywords

Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence

Abstract

The Electrical Systems Division at the NASA Kennedy Space Center has developed and deployed an agent-based tool to monitor the space shuttle's ground processing telemetry stream. The application, the NASA Engineering Shuttle Telemetry Agent (NESTA), increases situational awareness for system and hardware engineers during ground processing of the shuttle's subsystems. The agent provides autonomous monitoring of the telemetry stream and automatically alerts system engineers when predefined criteria have been met. Efficiency and safety are improved through increased automation. Sandia National Labs' Java Expert System Shell is employed as the rule engine. The shell's predicate logic lends itself well to capturing the heuristics and specifying the engineering rules of this spaceport domain. The declarative paradigm of the rule-based agent yields a highly modular and scalable design spanning multiple subsystems of the shuttle. Several hundred monitoring rules have been written thus far with corresponding notifications sent to shuttle engineers. This article discusses the rule-based telemetry agent used for space shuttle ground processing and explains the problem domain, development of the agent software, benefits of AI technology, and deployment and sustaining engineering of the product.

Journal Title

Ai Magazine

Volume

27

Issue/Number

3

Publication Date

1-1-2006

Document Type

Article; Proceedings Paper

Language

English

First Page

25

Last Page

35

WOS Identifier

WOS:000240933700003

ISSN

0738-4602

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