Automation for Vehicle and Crew Operations

Space missions are immensely costly endeavor – fault free function of the hardware and software used therein are highly critical to mission success. Being highly complex, manual intervention in operation, troubleshooting, and health management related areas are labor intensive and time consuming. On top of that with time the complexities of the systems are increasing, and the performance and availability requirements are become even more stringent. In the face of this situation, automation technologies are increasingly looked upon to perform critical tasks in short time, without manual intervention (or with minimal intervention) in error-free manner. Qualtech Systems, Inc., in collaboration with TRACLabs, Inc., proposes developing novel capabilities in the areas of health management, providing information for health and capability-related situational awareness, acquisition of data from onboard systems, and generating and invoking procedures for troubleshooting, restoration of operation, and/or initiating safety assurance processes.

The benefit to NASA from this effort will be a fully integrated health monitoring, capability assessment, and maintenance planning tool that reduces flight controller workload by sharing information with other MCC applications. The first deployment of the proposed technology is expected to be for the NASA for their projects' involving exploratory vehicles. - Application will be well integrated with SHIELD, DRaTs and HRaTs led by NASA, AMES for improved mission performance. - Utilization of continuous health assessment and mission satisfiability information for improved mission success while increasing mission safety and reducing flight controller and crew workload

The results of the proposed research and technology development effort will be of immense value to any complex systems that are critical to automated or semi-automated industrial and military missions and operations such as aircraft systems, combat vehicles, Navy ships as well semiconductor FAB and industrial automation equipment. Specifically, air transport, space-based systems, underwater, and maritime (both civil and military) sectors can be the potential end user of the technologies developed from this effort. All these systems require the presence of mission critical systems whose operations are mostly automated and conducted in demanding circumstances. The techniques, algorithms and information workflow developed in this effort will enhance operational efficacy and contribute significantly to mission success through condition monitoring and aiding in the reconfiguration of critical systems and facilitating effective choices of mission plans.

This is early/mid-stage (TRL 6) — the most realistic path in is NASA SBIR/STTR, which funds small businesses and research institutions to develop technology aligned with NASA's needs (equity-free, phased funding). Check whether a current SBIR/STTR solicitation topic overlaps with this project's technology area, or contact the project directly (above) to ask.

None of these are guaranteed paths for this specific project — TechPort itself doesn't have an "apply" button. Reaching out to the contact(s) above with a specific question is usually the fastest way to find out what's actually open.