Software Tools for Fault Management Technologies

System autonomy is a key enabler for satisfying complex mission goals, enhancing mission success probabilities, as well as safety at a reduced cost. Fault Management (FM) is one of the most crucial components of system autonomy. NASA has come up with an FM Handbook that provides requirements, rules and guidelines for improving the FM design, development, verification & validation and operations processes. However, adherence to FM directives for realizing the above mentioned goals necessitates aid from advanced software tools. These tools should be able to model a system (during the design phase) from the FM perspective, support various design evaluation and validation activities, identify shortcomings or inconsistencies in the designs, and aid FM design updating/revision. During the operational phase, these tools should perform fault detection, diagnostics, and prognostics; assess functional capabilities of various systems; provide actionable decisions for health management; facilitate optimal troubleshooting and maintenance; and assess probabilities of individual mission objective satisfaction and overall mission success. QSI's TEAMS (Testability Engineering and Maintenance System) SW suite already hosts a number of these desired capabilities. Consequently, QSI proposes to introduce additional modeling and analytic capabilities to TEAMS and enhance the existing, so as to make it an effective support tool for FM.

Establishing the FM technology and the software tool for supporting their implementation will allow NASA to better plan and execute future space missions. The envisioned SW tool from the proposed effort primarily satisfies the design-time FM goals. But their analytic capabilities can be used in the operation-phases as well. Thus the technologies can be applied for design updating of existing systems and towards improving their health management systems. The improvements can be made in the areas of utilization of monitored information or analytic outputs, health condition assessment and forecasting, and dissemination of information in efficient manners such that those can be used for updating design and/or operation-related aspects.

The industries interested in fault-tolerant high-availability systems will be the beneficiary of the outcome of this project. They can utilize the SW tool for ensuring robust fault-tolerance and fast and economic maintenance – via using the failure containment support (in design) and fault detection, identification and diagnosis with 'no' or 'very low' level of ambiguity. The space system industries (e.g., satellite manufactures and operators), aircraft manufacturers and their customers, and maritime industry are the industrial sectors of interest and will be targeted as part of the commercialization effort. Mission planning and execution processes that utilize diagnostic and prognostic information related to aircraft and spacecraft systems are also of interest. In addition, sectors that are looking towards introducing automation in their product design and development phases, (such as automotive industry as well as semiconductor fabrication and other large industrial automation units) will also be targeted for commercialization of this product.

This is early/mid-stage (TRL 4) — 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.