NASA SBIR 2006 Solicitation

SMALL BUSINESS CONCERN (Firm Name, Mail Address, City/State/Zip, Phone)
Scientific Systems Company, Inc.
500 West Cummings Park, Suite 3000
Woburn, MA 01801-6580
(781) 933-5355

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR/PROJECT MANAGER (Name, E-mail, Mail Address, City/State/Zip, Phone)
Sanjeev   Seereeram
sanjeev@ssci.com
500 West Cummings park, Suite 3000
Woburn, MA  01801-6580
(781) 933-5355

TECHNICAL ABSTRACT ( Limit 2000 characters, approximately 200 words)
Recent work has developed a number of architectures and algorithms for accurately estimating spacecraft and formation states. The estimation accuracy achievable during spacecraft operation depends not only on the algorithm, but also on its implementation. Typically, the algorithm will be implemented on a real-time multi-tasking processor that allocates on-board computational resources to multiple tasks and functions according to some scheduling policy. The processor's task scheduler may induce delays that were unaccounted for at design-time and may sometimes preempt estimation tasks in favor of other tasks. Hence, estimation accuracy and in general the performance of any embedded algorithm can be significantly lower than expected during execution. The goal of this project is to develop distributed spacecraft state estimation algorithms that account for real-time multi-tasking processor and other implementation related resource constraints. We bring together modeling techniques from multi-class queuing, well-known Kalman filtering techniques and recent advances in embedded systems to develop an innovative co-design framework for the design of embedded state estimation algorithms and software. During the proposed effort, we will design, implement and evaluate estimation algorithms on a network of real-time processors or hardware emulations of processors on-board formation spacecraft.

POTENTIAL NASA COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS ( Limit 1500 characters, approximately 150 words)
Directly addresses concerns in embedded control systems for formation flying spacecraft. NASA's Next Generation Air Transportation System will use real-time multi-tasking environment for control, estimation and integrated vehicle health monitoring tasks. Another NASA applications include embedded jet engine control systems.

POTENTIAL NON-NASA COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS ( Limit 1500 characters, approximately 150 words)
Embedded control and estimation systems are used in a wide range of commercial and military applications. This SBIR effort uses a co-design approach to develop state estimation algorithms for implementation using real-time multi-tasking operating systems.

NASA's technology taxonomy has been developed by the SBIR-STTR program to disseminate awareness of proposed and awarded R/R&D in the agency. It is a listing of over 100 technologies, sorted into broad categories, of interest to NASA.

TECHNOLOGY TAXONOMY MAPPING

Attitude Determination and Control Autonomous Control and Monitoring Autonomous Reasoning/Artificial Intelligence Guidance, Navigation, and Control Intelligence On-Board Computing and Data Management Software Tools for Distributed Analysis and Simulation Telemetry, Tracking and Control Teleoperation