Dr. Kristin Yvonne Rozier - No More Helicopter Parenting: Intelligent Autonomous UAS's

NASA Ames Research Center Director's Colloquium, June 10, 2014, Moffett Field, California. Safety is NASA's top priority! The search for innovative new ways to validate and verify is vital for the development of safety-critical systems. Such techniques have been successfully used to assure systems for air traffic control, airplane separation assurance, autopilots, logic designs, medical devices, and other functions that ensure human safety. Safety is important to ensure at all stages of a system's lifetime, from design time to run time.

We take a look at an exciting recent advancement in run time System Health Management (SHM) for totally autonomous Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) tasked with important missions like wild-fire surveillance and earthquake response.

Our real-time, Realizable, Responsive, Unobtrusive Unit (rt-R2U2) meets the emerging needs for SHM of new safety-critical embedded systems like automated vehicles, UAS, or small satellites. SHM for these systems must be able to handle unexpected situations and adapt specifications quickly during flight testing between closely-timed consecutive missions, and must enable more advanced probabilistic reasoning for diagnostics and prognostics while running aboard limited hardware without affecting the certified on-board software.

Come learn about the new technologies that can enable a fire-fighting UAS to fly!

The NASA Ames Director's Colloquium Summer Series was presented by the Office of the Chief Scientist as part of the Center's 75th anniversary celebration.