A Salish & Kootenai Tribally Owned Business

NASA Advanced Software Development

S&K Global Solutions is providing advanced software development for NASA under two (2) Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase 1 contracts.

 

Figure 1

The first is a software tool called the Autonomy Requirements Tester (ART), which will assist engineers at NASA in managing and communicating autonomy requirements for flight and robotic systems. The software will support the development of robots (especially those interacting with humans) and the development of autonomous spacecraft systems for both unmanned spacecraft and those supporting small crews. (Read more about this project)

 

ART Test Runner (Figure 1) will use a test specification associated with requirements for autonomy to test apps implemented in NASA’s Core Flight Software (cFS) architecture and record the results. It will take advantage of the publish-subscribe architecture of cFS.

 

Figure 2

For the second software tool, S&K Global Solutions is designing a Fault Management (FM) Viewer software tool which will assist with planning FM development by providing new ways of visualizing FM concepts and data. As pressures increase for spacecraft autonomy, they will also increase for additional FM. The FM Viewer software tool offers the ability to include better FM while spending development and testing resources more cost efficiently. (Read more about this project)

 

The FM Viewer (Figure 2) makes it more apparent to developers the relationships among the fault management concepts so they can select the ones with the greatest impact and the least development costs. This is one of many display concepts showing relationships among FM concepts. The items above in red illustrate new relationships and concepts that become more apparent as planners begin modeling the FM concepts for their new system.

 

Accolades and Customer Feedback


“We need to develop tools like this in order to be effective in integrating humans and engineered systems.”—Session Chair at 2009 Human Factors and Ergonomics Society meeting.

 

“We must get these concepts under control so we can plan them better. This project is a good step in that direction.” –NASA Technical Monitor for a previous fault management SBIR project.

Best paper award for the Systems Development Technical Group at the annual meeting of the Human Factors and Ergonomic Society, 2009. This was for a report on an SBIR to develop a Concept of Operations Storyboarding Tool.

Client:

NASA

Location:

Houston, TX

Core Services:

C programming language, Robotic Operating System (ROS), Initial visualization prototypes are being developed using graphics capabilities of Java, Explicit XML data modeling, Autonomous Spacecraft Systems – Solar Probe Plus, using cFS is the focus of the Phase I effort, Flight Systems – compatible with systems developed with the cFS Architecture, Robotic Systems – Valkyrie and Robonaut 2 – potential expansions for Phase II and beyond, Rovers – Lunar Prospector – potential expansions for Phase II and beyond,

A Salish & Kootenai Tribally Owned Business