2022 IEEE Aerospace Conference (AERO)最新文献

{"title":"Dynamics of Tethered Space-Robot Swarm for Active Debris Removal","authors":"A. Sharma, N. K. Sinha","doi":"10.1109/AERO53065.2022.9843609","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/AERO53065.2022.9843609","url":null,"abstract":"Recent space activity trends herald a huge increase in the frequency of space launches and plans for constellations of satellites in space in the very near future. This calls for active measures to remove space debris from the orbits to maintain sustainable space access. This is mainly due to the high risk of collision of active spacecrafts with space debris that can easily lead to the failure of missions. Methods like space tether and tethered net are active areas of research and stand as promising candidates for low-cost and effective solutions to mitigate space debris. However, the success rate of capturing debris in conventional methods is debatable. This paper discusses the application of a swarm of agents attached to a space debris using space teth-ers to perform cooperative orbital maneuver of the space debris. The application of a swarm instead of a monolithic space robot boosts the flexibility, reusability, and robustness of the missions and improves the success rate of capturing the space debris of different shapes and sizes. A swarm of CubeSats attached to a rigid body space debris via space tethers is modeled. The space tether is modeled as a series of lumped masses to account for its dynamics and flexibility. The dynamics of the coupled nonlinear system are studied and swarm control laws are formulated using Artificial Potential Field method. The proposal of decentralized control of the swarm opens the possibility of scaling the missions to cooperatively work in numbers which can be computationally too expensive otherwise. A deorbiting control for the swarm is proposed such that it maximizes the decay rate of the semimajor axis. Numerical simulation results show that the proposed swarm control is capable of detumbling the space debris and deorbit it into the atmosphere from Lower Earth Orbit (LEO).","PeriodicalId":219988,"journal":{"name":"2022 IEEE Aerospace Conference (AERO)","volume":"21 10 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-03-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128454191","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"CubeSat Formations for Monitoring Hurricanes","authors":"Pardhasai Chadalavada, A. Dutta","doi":"10.1109/AERO53065.2022.9843636","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/AERO53065.2022.9843636","url":null,"abstract":"Recent technological advancements have enabled distributed sensing of major weather events such as hurricanes using CubeSats. This paper proposes three novel formation flying concepts of operations to improve the hurricane forecast accuracy by filling the current observation gaps. The first concept leverages the use of non-Dopplerized precipitation radars, while the second concept envisions the use of Dopplerized precipitation radars in formation. Both formation designs enable the collection of simultaneous multi-frequency data, with different constituent CubeSats operating at different frequencies. The third formation concept leverages the use of non-Dopplerized precipitation radars, each operating at a different frequency, flying in formation with a synthetic aperture radar (SAR) in a multi-static configuration. The paper presents the concepts of operations for each formation and conducts mission analysis for relevant operational needs. Specifically, we determine the safe (no collision) and efficient relative orbits designed by considering J2 perturbations for the proposed formation designs. Furthermore, we conduct a performance comparison, focusing on formation initialization as well as formation-keeping cost.","PeriodicalId":219988,"journal":{"name":"2022 IEEE Aerospace Conference (AERO)","volume":"5 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-03-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128288327","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Assessment of Depth Data Acquisition Methods for Virtual Reality Mission Operations Support Tools","authors":"Alexandra Forsey-Smerek, C. Paige, F. Ward, D. D. Haddad, Lindsay M. Sanneman, Jessica Todd, J. Heldmann, D. Lim, Dava Newman","doi":"10.1109/AERO53065.2022.9843571","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/AERO53065.2022.9843571","url":null,"abstract":"NASA intends to be back on the Moon within the next two years, and to have long-duration, manned missions to Mars in the late 2030s. These future exploration goals demand a paradigm shift. Mission operational complexity is increasing and - with the development of heavy lift launch capabilities and increased funding of lunar orbital and surface missions - cadence of lunar missions will increase. A sustained human presence on the Moon, and eventually Mars, demands new enabling technologies and capabilities to support in situ resource utilization (ISRU). The development of ISRU technologies requires precursory scientific and prospecting missions to identify and characterize available resources. These missions will employ robotic and human explorers to perform traverses over the lunar surface and collect data to fulfill scientific objectives. The time and monetary resources required to support a mission make maximizing the scientific return of each mission critical. Given the wide range of scientific objectives often found within a mission, the vast scope of diverse expertise within the Earth-located science team will prove invaluable to strategic decision making. Essential to maximizing scientific return on these missions is the ability of the Earth-located science team to be central to rapid science decision making, between and during traverses. Human-computer interaction needs to lead mission planning priorities to enable rapid decision processes. Treating machines as collaboration tools allows for improved cross-team communication, improved decision-making processes, reduced task loads, and flexibility in temporal and spatial planning. Multi-user naturalistic visualization techniques can be used to analyze, discuss, and interpret near-real-time data with the potential to dramatically improve science support room situation awareness, maximizing scientific return on robotic and human exploration missions. The virtual reality Mission Simulation System (vMSS), is a virtual reality platform designed at MIT by the Resource Exploration and Science of our Cosmic Environment (RESOURCE) team, which will provide teams with a collaboration interface for planetary exploration missions. As an early step in development of vMSS, we examine various methods to acquire depth data necessary for development of a high-resolution three-dimensional map of the lunar surface, which will serve as a basis of the platform. In this paper we argue the importance of high-resolution depth data for scientific return, and the limitations of current planetary surface mapping tools using methods such as orbital data and Structure-from-Motion ($S$ fM) Photogrammetry. We present a comparative analysis of four different methods to achieve depth-mapping using stereo cameras, short-range time-of-flight, LiDAR, and 360° 3D VR imagery. For this analysis, we performed a field experiment with the Boston Dynamics Spot robot, taking advantage of its ability to maneuver in geologically relevant","PeriodicalId":219988,"journal":{"name":"2022 IEEE Aerospace Conference (AERO)","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-03-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128677900","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Accelerated Radiation Test on Quantized Neural Networks trained with Fault Aware Training","authors":"Giulio Gambardella, Nicholas J. Fraser, Ussama Zahid, G. Furano, Michaela Blott","doi":"10.1109/AERO53065.2022.9843614","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/AERO53065.2022.9843614","url":null,"abstract":"Quantized neural networks (QNNs) are increasingly considered for adoption on multiple applications, thanks to their high accuracy, but also since they allow for significantly lower compute and memory footprints. While the theory behind QNNs is achieving a high level of maturity, several new challenges have arisen during QNN deployment. Reliable and safe implementations of QNN accelerators becomes pivotal, especially when targeting safety critical applications like automotive, industrial and aerospace, requiring innovative solutions and their careful evaluation. In this work we compare the accuracy of QNNs during accelerated radiation testing when trained with different methodologies and implemented with a dataflow architecture in field programmable gate arrays (FPGA). The initial experiment shows that QNNs trained with a novel methodology, called fault-aware training (FAT), which accounts for soft errors during neural network (NN) training, makes QNNs more resilient to single-event-effects (SEEs) in FPGA.","PeriodicalId":219988,"journal":{"name":"2022 IEEE Aerospace Conference (AERO)","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-03-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129323846","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Spacecraft Time-Series Online Anomaly Detection Using Extreme Learning Machines","authors":"Sriram Baireddy, Moses W. Chan, Sundip R. Desai, Richard H. Foster, M. Comer, E. Delp","doi":"10.1109/AERO53065.2022.9843380","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/AERO53065.2022.9843380","url":null,"abstract":"Detecting anomalies in spacecraft telemetry channels is a high priority, especially considering the harshness of the spacecraft operating environment. These anomalies often function as precursors for system failure. Currently, telemetry channel monitoring is done manually by domain experts, which is time-consuming and limited in scope. Given that each satellite system has thousands of channels to monitor, an automated approach to anomaly detection would be ideal. Machine learning models have been shown to be effective at detecting the normal behavior of the channels and flagging any abnormalities. However, a unique model needs to be trained for each channel, and high performing models have been shown to require an increased training time. We propose using an ensemble of online sequential extreme learning machines to quickly understand the behavior of a given channel and identify anomalies in near real-time. This greatly reduces the amount of training time and data required to obtain a model for each channel. We present the results of our approach to show that we can achieve performance comparable to state-of-the-art spacecraft anomaly detection methods with minimal training time and data.","PeriodicalId":219988,"journal":{"name":"2022 IEEE Aerospace Conference (AERO)","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-03-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129646741","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Reducing Object Detection Uncertainty from RGB and Thermal Data for UAV Outdoor Surveillance","authors":"Juan Sandino, P. Caccetta, Conrad Sanderson, F. Maire, Felipe Gonzalez","doi":"10.1109/AERO53065.2022.9843611","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/AERO53065.2022.9843611","url":null,"abstract":"Recent advances in Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have resulted in their quick adoption for wide a range of civilian applications, including precision agriculture, biosecurity, disaster monitoring and surveillance. UAVs offer low-cost platforms with flexible hardware configurations, as well as an increasing number of autonomous capabilities, including take-off, landing, object tracking and obstacle avoidance. However, little attention has been paid to how UAVs deal with object detection uncertainties caused by false readings from vision-based detectors, data noise, vibrations, and occlusion. In most situations, the relevance and understanding of these detections are delegated to human operators, as many UAVs have limited cognition power to interact autonomously with the environment. This paper presents a framework for autonomous navigation under uncertainty in outdoor scenarios for small UAVs using a probabilistic-based motion planner. The framework is evaluated with real flight tests using a sub 2 kg quadrotor UAV and illustrated in victim finding Search and Rescue (SAR) case study in a forest/bushland. The navigation problem is modelled using a Partially Observable Markov Decision Process (POMDP), and solved in real time onboard the small UAV using Augmented Belief Trees (ABT) and the TAPIR toolkit. Results from experiments using colour and thermal imagery show that the proposed motion planner provides accurate victim localisation coordinates, as the UAV has the flexibility to interact with the environment and obtain clearer visualisations of any potential victims compared to the baseline motion planner. Incorporating this system allows optimised UAV surveillance operations by diminishing false positive readings from vision-based object detectors.","PeriodicalId":219988,"journal":{"name":"2022 IEEE Aerospace Conference (AERO)","volume":"8 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-03-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129808319","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Solar Energy Harvesting for a Land-to-Recharge Tiltrotor Micro Aerial Vehicle","authors":"S. Carlson, C. Papachristos","doi":"10.1109/AERO53065.2022.9843249","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/AERO53065.2022.9843249","url":null,"abstract":"This work addresses the problem of self-sufficient long-term operation of UAVs in the context of multi-day mission profiles, by proposing the key innovation of onboard solar en-ergy harvesting while the vehicle remains grounded. Relying on a custom-developed small-sized energy harvesting module and a solar cell array embedded in its wings, the Micro Aerial Vehicle becomes capable of recharging its depleted battery levels during a days's cycle while idly sitting on the ground. During the self-recharge operation the vehicle's high-level electronics remain in hibernation, and the system is woken up once adequately charged, proceeding to enter into a mission, executing take-off, waypoint following, and landing autonomously. The cycle can be repeated indefinitely as long as solar energy is available. The presented system, the MiniHawk-VTOL is a rapidly prototyped Tricopter Tiltrotor designed to accommodate the aforementioned needs, aiming to achieve autonomous migratory mission patterns (land-to-recharge-and-resume). The power electronics used to accomplish this mission cycle are detailed, and the results are shown for a typical recharge cycle in near-optimal conditions, and for instances of typical broken and overcast cloud cover. Additionally, we present an experimental sequence of suspend-to-charge and wakeup-to-resume with autonomous GPS-based takeoff, mission execution, and landing.","PeriodicalId":219988,"journal":{"name":"2022 IEEE Aerospace Conference (AERO)","volume":"27 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-03-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129135497","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Comparing Performance of Coded Communications over fading channels between the Lunar South Pole & Earth","authors":"D. Divsalar, M. S. Net, K. Cheung","doi":"10.1109/AERO53065.2022.9843252","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/AERO53065.2022.9843252","url":null,"abstract":"In this paper we design and analyze an end-to-end communication system between a lander/rover on the surface of the lunar South Pole and an Earth station. Various communication systems on the lander or rover could be used for the Earth-to-Moon communication in both the uplink and downlink direction. To communicate to and from the lander/rover on the lunar South Pole, low and/or medium directional antennas onboard the lander/rover will have to be pointed at low elevation angles between 2 to 10 degrees, thus causing multipath fading effects due to reflection of a portion of the transmitted electromagnetic waves from the surface of the Moon. These are not commonly encountered in traditional deep space communications between a spacecraft and a ground station. We investigate various design methods and analyze such communication systems, in the presence of multipath fading. We model the fading channel based on existing and simulated data. For coherent reception, the acquisition and tracking loop should acquire and track incoming carrier phase in presence of Rician multipath fading. For this communication system in addition to estimating the received carrier phase, the amplitude of the fading signal should also be estimated, in particular to be used in the decoder. We consider simple modulation and coding schemes in particular those specified in the CCSDS standards for space applications. After designing various components of the communication system, we use Simulink models to obtain the end-to-end performance of the communication link under investigation. Based on the available data, the fading channel can be accurately modeled as a Rician fading channel with various Rician parameters depending on the Earth elevation angle, which also affects the Doppler spread. Therefore, the challenge is to design a communication system robust in the presence of the multipath fading where the channel conditions change in time and thus produce fading. In summary, this paper compares possible communication system designs, performance analysis, and simulations for coded system with/without interleaving with hard/soft decision and with/without channel state information (CSI), over a communication link between a lander/rover at the Lunar south pole and a Deep Space Network station in presence of Rician fading.","PeriodicalId":219988,"journal":{"name":"2022 IEEE Aerospace Conference (AERO)","volume":"31 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-03-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130651907","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Assessment of Crew Time for Maintenance and Repair Activities for Lunar Surface Missions","authors":"C. Stromgren, Chase Lynch, Jason Cho, W. Cirillo, Andrew C. Owens","doi":"10.1109/AERO53065.2022.9843431","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/AERO53065.2022.9843431","url":null,"abstract":"NASA is currently evaluating different methods to predict how much time crewmembers will spend conducting repair and maintenance activities on future space missions. As mission scope and spacecraft architectures change, understanding how crew repair and maintenance timelines are impacted by mission operations and technology changes is vital for future mission planning. Past work has been done using historical International Space Station (ISS) data to accurately predict crew habitation and operation timelines, resulting in the development of NASA's Exploration Crew Time Model (ECTM). However, understanding crew maintenance and repair requirements has posed a unique challenge due to the complexity of available datasets, the probabilistic nature of sub-system failures, and the impacts of reliability growth on failure rates. This paper presents a methodology to collect and condition empirical repairand maintenance time data from available data sets, to extrapolate from that data to estimate projected maintenance and repair times for a lunar Surface Habitat (SH), and to assess how uncertainty in repair time could impact utilization time on the lunar surface. NASA ISS maintenance and crew time data are logged into two central databases: the Maintenance Data Collection (MDC) and the Operations Planning Timeline Integration System (OPTimIS). Separately, each of these two datasets capture only portions of the complete set of data required to generate an accurate assessment of crew time spent on maintenance activities at a sub-system level. To create a more useful crew time estimate for maintenance timelines, the authors developed a methodology to capture relevant data from each set and combine and utilize that data by linking crew time requirements to specific components. The authors compare the failure logs in the MDC to crew activity logs pulled from OPTimIS and then process the data to estimate required repair times for each failure and repair event. The entire maintenance activity dataset is then categorized based on the class of failed component to ensure a significant sample size for each class and accurate crew time estimates for any components lacking relevant data. This resultant component repair time data can be used in the future to generate Mean Time to Repair (MTTR) estimates and confidence intervals for each class of component based on a probabilistic distribution of documented maintenance events. These improved MTTR values can then be applied to candidate element sub-system architectures, along with component Mean Time Between Failure (MTBF) data to generate distributions for potential required system crew repair time estimates for a given mission. The authors applied these modeling methods to a case study of a crewed mission to the planned SH and produced expected corrective maintenance crew time distributions. The results produced an expected corrective maintenance crew time at over 24 hours per mission, and a maintenance crew time distri","PeriodicalId":219988,"journal":{"name":"2022 IEEE Aerospace Conference (AERO)","volume":"8 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-03-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130781584","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Prospects for Very Long-Range Mars Rover Missions","authors":"L. Matthies, A. Kennett, L. Kerber, A. Fraeman, R. C. Anderson","doi":"10.1109/AERO53065.2022.9843681","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/AERO53065.2022.9843681","url":null,"abstract":"The longest distance traveled to date by a Mars rover is 45 kilometers (km), driven by Opportunity in 14 Earth years. The primary mission for Perseverance is expected to cover up to about 20 km in about 2 Earth years. In contrast, the recent Intrepid lunar rover mission concept study envisions driving about 1,800 km in 4 Earth years, benefitting from lower gravity, greater solar power availability, simpler concepts of operation, and much shorter communication latency with Earth. This raises questions of what fundamentally limits rover range on Mars and what new mission concepts might be possible if Mars rover range could be increased substantially. Assuming a few key technology advances, this paper will present a model for energy-limited driving range for a solar-powered rover in the 100 to 200 kilogram (kg) size range that shows that order of magnitude increases in driving range should be possible over goals for Perseverance. These technologies are (1) high-speed, heaterless mobility actuators, (2) avionics with much lower size, weight, and power (SWaP) and much greater onboard computing capability, and (3) more advanced algorithms for onboard autonomy that reduce the frequency of required interactions with human operators, or “ground-in-the-loop” (GITL) cycles. We will discuss three new classes of Mars rover missions that could be enabled by such capability. These are (1) more thorough exploration of individual geologic type localities, which requires total range on the order of 100 kilometers (km), (2) visiting two or more type localities in a single mission, which requires total range on the order of at least several hundred km, and (3) exploring the north polar layered deposits, where driving only about 10 km in one Mars summer might enable sampling roughly a million years of ice layers.","PeriodicalId":219988,"journal":{"name":"2022 IEEE Aerospace Conference (AERO)","volume":"102 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-03-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132412706","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}