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Goddard and LogicNets Collaborate in the Building of a Test-bed Environment for an Intelligent Robotic System
A new agreement between NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and LogicNets, Inc.*, is enabling collaborative development of an intelligence modeling and runtime environment for autonomous robotic systems. These intelligence models will be embedded into a variety of vehicles and will control the vehicles during various missions and tasks in different environments. The test-bed framework will also provide a means for testing new exploration technologies, procedures, and techniques. Potential applications for intelligent autonomous vehicles are vast, including mapping, exploration, and monitoring of land and water surfaces on Earth as well as unknown planetary surfaces. Benefits of Technology Transfer
About LogicNets LogicNets has provided an easy-to-use, affordable online knowledge automation software platform since 1999. Based in Washington, D.C., the company serves customers in North America and Europe, providing the ability to distribute expertise to thousands of users as professional Web services. Innovation Through Collaboration Looking for new methods of exploration on the Moon, Mars, and Europa (one of Jupiter’s moons), Goddard scientists are researching many different autonomous robotic vehicles. Custom-making each vehicle, including hard coding procedures, would be very cumbersome, tedious, and expensive. Researchers need a uniform, consistent, standardized framework in which to test the vehicles without committing time and funds to coding everything about the vehicles and their environment. Working with LogicNets, NASA Goddard scientists will develop an artificial intelligence (AI) test-bed with the capability to predict if/how a vehicle will work in various exploration scenarios before time and funds are committed to vehicle development and mission deployment. Based on LogicNets’ expert system application modeling and runtime environments, the system will also be able to control real vehicles and to make the decisions for the interaction between the robotic vehicle systems and the environment. Goddard will contribute software procedures and rules to develop the robotic test system, thereby populating the LogicNets framework with vehicle and environmental information and parameters for testing. The two organizations will also collaboratively test learning algorithms and develop a software framework independent of any specific type of vehicle. The Transfer Process LogicNets has been working for many years on its main product, which creates procedural models for the business world using an expert runtime environment. Goddard was looking for a company with expertise in this area and a product that could evolve into an autonomous system for robotic vehicles. Goddard was also seeking a company with motivation to invest its own resources in developing an AI testbed that would be applicable to NASA and had the flexibility for growth to accommodate new vehicles, vision systems, sensors, actuators, and other technologies that NASA may deploy for future missions. LogicNets was one of few companies that fit the bill. Working diligently with Goddard’s Innovative Partnerships Program (IPP) Office, Goddard scientists and LogicNets arrived at an agreement that is mutually beneficial. The work performed under the nonreimbursable Space Act Agreement signed in March 2007 will answer NASA's need for a robotic vehicle test system while increasing LogicNets’ competitive advantage and potential market penetration. Looking Ahead With an agreement in place, researchers at both organizations are collaborating to develop a robotic system that can be defined and tested in any exploration scenario. They expect the work to take at least two years to complete, at which time testing and evaluation may be followed by implementation in NASA exploration missions.
Contact Innovative Partnerships Program Office (2007)
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On the Record “In working together with NASA, LogicNets will demonstrate and further expand the capabilities of its product to successfully control autonomous vehicles performing exploration missions. LogicNets will benefit from the vast experience NASA has with unmanned vehicles, and the available test facilities to validate the results. In formalizing the agreement, the IPP Office has been extremely helpful. During the process we had numerous questions and concerns, which were addressed immediately and the IPP Office worked with us to make the agreement work for both organizations.” “Building this standardized framework would be much more time consuming, difficult, and expensive for NASA to do on its own. This is a huge driving force behind technology transfer agreements. LogicNets can save their customers (including NASA) a lot of money by providing a testing framework. Every time we [NASA] want to put a robotic system in space, we don’t have to program all the possibilities. With the framework we’re creating [with LogicNets], we can try it out first and minimize the risk of these missions by giving them the ability to resolve problems autonomously, increase science return, and make the mission more efficient.”
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