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Media Contact:
David Domeshek
508.873.7068
Jim Ong
650.931.2710
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
NASA AWARDS CONTRACT TO STOTTLER HENKE FOR
INTELLIGENT ONBOARD FAULT DIAGNOSIS AND RECOVERY SOFTWARE
Artificial intelligence technology will improve crew self-reliance
in the maintenance
of advanced life support systems during long-term manned space
missions
SAN MATEO, CA, Mar. 4, 1998 -- Stottler Henke Associates, Inc. today announced
the award of a two year $580,000 Phase II contract with the NASA Lyndon B. Johnson
Space Center to develop an intelligent fault diagnosis and recovery planning
system designed to minimize the need for ground support during long-duration
missions. The new software will enable crew members to diagnosis problems
and effect repairs in their advanced life support systems without assistance
from engineers on the ground.
Future manned planetary exploration missions, such as missions to Mars, will
require crews to spend two to five years at extreme distances from the earth.
To survive, the crew will have to be self-reliant, and their equipment will
have to be highly reliable. Additionally, the need to recycle resources such
as oxygen and water will require more complex life support systems. When problems
occur in the equipment, crew members will have to diagnose the problems and
effect the repairs themselves. Although crew members will be intelligent,
technically educated, and highly trained, their primary expertise will be in
mission-related science, rather than in the diagnosis and repair of diverse
equipment.
Stottler Henke will develop for NASA an On-Board Health Maintenance System (OBHMS),
an intelligent fault diagnosis and recovery planning software system to help
crew members maintain their advanced life support systems. To diagnose
a fault, the software will reason about causal relationships using computer
models of the life support systems. The software will employ a knowledge base
of known faults and their symptoms to accelerate its search for an explanation
of the fault. Once the problem has been diagnosed, the system will construct
detailed, step-by-step recovery procedures for the crew by combining appropriate
recovery actions that it selects from a knowledge base. The software will
also guide the crew members through the execution of these procedures, and will
present multimedia explanations when needed. Stottler Henke will also provide
knowledge acquisition tools that enable NASA engineers to configure the models
and knowledge bases for specific systems without programming.
"The Stottler Henke OBHMS system will encode the knowledge of the best experts
at maintaining the systems critical to the astronauts' survival when they venture
forth to explore the solar system," says Dr. John L. Mohammed, the project's
principal investigator. "The OBHMS system will increase crew self-reliance and
reduce mission support costs, and thus help make manned planetary exploration
economically feasible."
Founded in 1988, Stottler Henke Associates, Inc.
applies artificial intelligence and other advanced software technologies
to solve problems that defy solution using traditional approaches.
The company delivers intelligent software solutions for education and training,
planning and scheduling, knowledge management and discovery, decision support,
and software development. Stottler Henke's clients include manufacturers,
retailers, educational media companies and government agencies.
Web: http://www.stottlerhenke.com.
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