SBIR 2003 Phase I: BrahmVE platform for design and test of Large Scale
Multi-agent Human-centric Mission Concepts
2003
SBIR Phase I Technical Proposal
BrahmVE Platform for Design and Test of
Large Scale Multi-agent Human-Centric Mission Concepts
in
the topic
F2.02 Space Flight
Proposal #9819
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PART
DESCRIPTION
PAGE
1
Table of Contents
3
2
Identification and Significance of the
Innovation
4
3
Technical Objectives
8
4
Work Plan
11
5
Related R/R&D
14
6
Key Personnel and Bibliography of Directly
Related Work
16
7
Relationship with Phase II or Future R/R&D
18
8
Company Information and Facilities
19
9
Subcontracts and Consultants
20
10
Commercial Applications Potential
20
11
Similar Proposals and Awards
22
Part
2 - Identification and Significance of the Innovation
2.1
Identifying the Challenge: Management of ISS and other future missions may require
the employment of large-scale multi-agent human-centered technologies
Today,
NASA is building craft that are too large and complex to be able to have full-scale
operational physical doubles on Earth to assist in troubleshooting and training.
In addition, efficient and safe day-to-day operation of longer duration missions
requires a deeper understanding of design for human work practice, psychology
and teamwork. Add to the mix a substantially increased number of subsystems
and people and centers in support roles, and there is a real risk that the complexity
of operational environments can overwhelm crew and mission control, leading
to critical errors.
On August 16, 2002, the following
news item appeared in the wires of the Associated Press [see bibliographic reference
1 in section 5.3]:
Whitson and
the space station's veteran commander, Valery Korzun, got off to a late start
installing the Russian cosmic-debris shields. They evidently forgot to open
an oxygen valve in their spacesuits while getting dressed, and the air lock
had to be repressurized so they could open their suits and fix the problem.
By the time
the spacewalkers finally opened the hatch, 250 miles (400 kilometers) above
the South Atlantic, almost two hours had been wasted…
Because of the late start, Russian flight
controllers cut the spacewalk short at 4 1/2 hours. The retrieval of a collection
tray for measuring jet residue was put off, as was wiping the area for signs
of contamination.
This
solicitation responds to the above type of mission complexity overload, calling
for the development of a broad spectrum of single and multi-agent human-centric
technologies to enable robust, self-learning and evolvable systems with varying
degrees of system level autonomy. The existence of such robust and flexible
human-agent “cognitive prostheses” will empower pre-flight training, improve
operational effectiveness, enhance safety and enable a wide variety of new missions
in the 21st Century, whether they be space stations, robotic planetary
orbital and surface explorers or human missions back to the moon or planets.
Indeed with increasing crew maintenance overhead in more complex space stations
and relatively short mean-times-to-failure of some current spacecraft components,
one cannot conceive of reaching Mars with a human crew without large scale agent
systems designed to ensure both vehicle and crew health.
Virtual
environments assume a critical new role in satisfying the need to train for
and to manage mission complexity
In just the past half-decade, NASA and its collaborators have made great progress
toward the vision of effective human-machine augmentation. Computing architectures
such as APEX [2,3] and Brahms [4,5,6,7,8,9] (see Figure 1 for a section
of Brahms AgentViewer user interface below), which support multi-agent simulation
with humans-in-the-loop, have been developed.
Figure 1: Interface view from Brahms AgentViewer
Figure 2: STS-61, the 1993 Hubble Space Telescope (HST)
Repair mission team using VR training simulator
Figure 3: Computer generated scene depicting the HST
capture and EVA repair mission for mission planning
NASA
began to use virtual environments and teleoperations in the 1970s culminating
in the extensive use of VR in crew training for 1993 STS-61 Hubble Repair mission
(figures 2,3) [10,11]. The JSC VR Laboratory, projects at other NASA centers
[12] and the ARC/JPL use of a virtual environment for the 1997 Pathfinder Mars
mission [13] suggested that synthetic environments would become key tools in
all aspects of future missions.
Figure 4: Robonaut in tests at JSC, June 2003
Figure 5: PSA exterior instrumentation
Figure 6: 3D exterior reconstruction from Intelligent
Virtual Station
Recently the SimStation and Intelligent Virtual Station (figure 6) at ARC [14,15]
and the use of VR and virtual worlds in projects to assist with the development
of robotic agents including PSA (figure 5) at ARC [16,17,18], DART and Robonaut
(figure 4) at the Dexterous
Robotics Laboratory at JSC [19,20] has brought virtual environments to the forefront
as a design tool to create flight-ready robotic hardware.
Elsewhere, industry, government and university laboratories have developed VE
environments for training and design/test, including Transom Jack [21], Steve
from USC [22], environments for submersibles and navy operations at the MOVES
Institute at the Naval Postgraduate School [23,24] and many more projects too
numerous to list here.
2.2
BrahmsVE: the evolution of an innovation
BrahmsVE
is the result of three years of intense work among the Brahms teams at RIACS,
NASA, and DigitalSpace beginning with an STTR in 2000 [25], continuing with
work to model EVA and day to day operations aboard the FMARS/Haughton-Mars Project
analogue habitats (figures 7,8) [26] and leading to a specification for the
OWorld and Brahms interfaces [27]. In 2002 Digital Space completed several “day
in the life” scenarios aboard FMARS (figure 9) [26] as well as a concept project
for Geoff Briggs at ARC and MER outreach (figure 10) for presentation at JPL
[29]. Finally in 2003, BrahmsVE was developed further to support simulation
of PSA aboard ISS (figure 11) [30] and an extensive water tank filling simulation
for FMARS (figures 12, 13, 14).
2000-2001 (STTR and RIACS support)
Figure 7: Modeling of virtual environment
for the HMP/FMARS habitat, rover and astronaut from first BrahmsVE feasibility
project
Figure 8: Scenario of the Bill Clancey agent astronaut enacting a complex
animation sequence inside the virtual FMARS habitat
2002 (RIACS and DigitalSpace)
Fig 9: Planning meeting simulation from 2002 BrahmsVE project to model
a day in the life of the FMARS analogue Mars habitat
Figure 10: MER rover modeled for JPL concept presentation
2003 (SBIR and RIACS)
Figure 11: Modeling PSA inside ISS engaging in a tool location and reporting
exercise, utilizing a laser pointer
Figure 12: Figure from water tank scenario
Figure 13: New exterior FMARS view
Figure 14: Water pump station
In
As a result of the success of these projects we believe that BrahmsVE is uniquely
qualified as a highly innovative and capable test bed for multi-agent human-centric
simulation for system design, training and operations. We will now enumerate
the architectural components of BrahmsVE.
A
virtual environment by itself is of little use without a powerful back-end architecture
that can represent the complexity of human-machine systems. For over a decade,
teams at NYNEX, the Institute for Research on Learning and now, at Agent iSolutions,
working with NASA Ames and RIACS, have been developing Brahms, an intelligent
multi-agent environment used for modeling, simulating and analyzing work practice.
Brahms is a data driven (forward chaining) discrete event environment usable
for simulation purposes as well as for agent-based software solutions requiring
the use of intelligent agents. From Brahms documentation:
Brahms
allows us to model the work activities of each type of role, and each individual
(or artifact) playing that role in an organization. The focus of a Brahms model
is on the context of work, meaning, how does the work really happen. One of
the essential requirements for Brahms is that we can model collaboration and
coordination between people working on one task, as well as that people can
work on more than one task at a time, and are interrupted and able to resume
their activities where they left off [31].
Prior to the partnership with DigitalSpace, Brahms models could only be viewed
in execution using a timeline bar chart-style interface (figure 1). It was determined
that Brahms could become a much more effective tool if it were to include interface
that allowed realistic reconstruction and interaction with 3D scenes representing
the real world people and systems being modeled.
Three years of development described above have resulted in the following architecture
connecting Brahms with Digital Space’s OWorld platform, the Adobe Atmosphere
3D browsers and many additional subsystems (see figure 15). The entire environment
allows researchers to develop and operate networked simulations within a standard
web browser on ordinary consumer personal computers with no special equipment.
The entire BrahmsVE package is therefore easier and much lower cost to operate,
develop models for and to introduce into geographically separated teams.
Figure 15: Current high level
process architecture for BrahmsVE platform
Part 3 - Technical Objectives
3.1 The Objective
It is clear that a major function of the ISS over the next decade will be as
a test-bed and living laboratory for the development and long-duration certification
of multi-agent, human-centric robotic and software systems. Indeed, the primary
scientific and engineering output of the ISS may well be that of a body of practice
and design experience in agent-based systems that can be applied to both future
NASA missions as well as commercial applications back on Earth.
To help to coalesce that body of practice, the islands of isolation that now
exist between groups working on human-agent systems for ISS need to be bridged.
It is proposed in this SBIR that we undertake a proof-of-concept project that
creates a macro-scale simulation of a future ISS on which multiple agent systems
are deployed. It is hoped that such a simulation, built through a process of
consultation and utilizing the BrahmsVE platform can be made available online
to researchers from several NASA centers and their collaborators and provide
another mechanism for future collaboration across teams.
Figure
16: Visions of ISS with PSA and Robonaut in action in interior and exterior
operations
Picture the ISS in a future configuration (figure 16 above) where a battery
of semi-autonomous and tele-operated agents and virtual environments for visualization
and management of Station activities join the human expedition:
·Three or more flight-ready Robonauts
connected by tele-operation to ISS or shuttle crew and ground-based controllers
are stationed on the exterior structure.
·Three interior Personal Satellite Assistants available to semi-autonomous operations by mission control or crew, two additional PSA’s are parked on the exterior of ISS and able to operate as free flying orbital observers inspecting the station, allowing another eye on EVA activities or flying by shuttles for tile inspections.
·Crew clothing and suits are each fully configured with health and status sensors and all garments can operate as autonomous agents in their own right, informing crew and controllers about the status and position of crew as well as the local environment (temperature, pressure, composition of atmosphere).
·A future generation Intelligent Virtual Station, which is updated in real time by sensors on all key onboard components is made available to both ISS mission controls and gives controllers a much improved cognitive.
This SBIR phase
1 proposes to extend the current BrahmsVE platform to create a unified space
station simulation that embodies the above “macro view” of several classes of
agent, multiple crew members and activities aboard a future hypothetical ISS.
Prior Brahms
ISS modeling
In
2002 and 2003 the Brahms team completed a number of Brahms models to reconstruct
activities aboard the ISS [8,9]. From the conclusions of the Brahms paper [9]:
The combination of a work practice
based analysis of the crew activities, and an agent-based approach to their
representation offers powerful instruments, both for studying, and then influencing,
human activities in manned space missions. Consequentially, our ongoing efforts
to model emergency scenarios might be useful to predict ISS crew behaviors and
their outcomes. In our continued research we are also exploring the use of the
ISS model as part of an environment for teamwork between ISS crews and onboard
software assistants and robotic systems, and as a short term planning and scheduling
tool for mission planners.
This preliminary work will serve as the basis for the creation of a scenario
for our BrahmsVE simulation. This scenario will be developed from a series of
interviews to be conducted with the major stakeholders in ISS future technologies
at several NASA centers (see work plan below).
New elements to be constructed:
the BrahmsVE Agent Broker
For this phase I SBIR project we will be building a new control module to the
“Agents” functional block of figure 15. This will be an “Agent Broker” (see
figure 17 below) which will provide a means to provide communications and scheduling
of all agent activities, reporting of exceptions and driving a unified user
interface to all agent activities.
Figure 17: schematic specification for the Agent Broker
The Agent Broker will bring a subsumption architecture to the BrahmsVE agent
space and enable the following new capabilities in BrahmsVE:
1.Serve as a versatile switching
center between multiple software agents and eventually supporting agents implemented
in hardware (such as PSA, mobile agents or Robonaut).
2.Provide user interface controls
(skins in HTML) to allow human operators to view and control potentially large
"swarms” of agents.
3.Broker communications from human
operators acting as avatars within the simulations.
4.Act as a special centralized
communications module to talk to the BrahmsVE SQL/PHP Database and thereby
to Brahms to communicate all actions that affect agents
5.Employ as its communications
protocol the new Extensible Modeling and Simulation Framework (XMSF) and XML-based
communications framework for simulation and agents (developed at the Naval
Postgraduate School MOVES Institute).
6.Multiple brokers would be supported
for distinct classes of agents.
This
Agent Broker is the key new technology that will be developed to power the hypothetical
ISS test virtual environment in BrahmsVE.
New
3D models and scripts
We will extend our existing 3D model of the interior of the ISS (figure 11)
to include full exterior views of a hypothetical future ISS configuration, and
then build Brahms models and 3D reconstructions of Robonaut, interior and exterior
PSA, sensored crew suits and implement a basic script to represent some of the
ten major ISS systems (table 1).
Table
1: Major ISS systems
1.Command and Data Handling
2.Communications and Tracking
3.Operations Local Area Network
4.Inventory Management System
5.Guidance, Navigation and
Control
6.Electrical Power System
7.Thermal Control System
8.Environmental Control and
Life Support System
9.Structures and Mechanisms
10.Robotics
Construction of Brahms models, test,
measure, and report
DigitalSpace
will implement all Brahms models and export the scenarios developed through
the existing Brahms actions sequences and synchronous communications capabilities
available through the BrahmsVE SQL/PHP back-end database. Scenarios will be
coded and tested against storyboards described by expert advisors in ISS simulation
and agent development at several NASA centers. Exceptions encountered in the
scenarios and lessons learned will be incorporated in a report back to the advisors.
This cycle was accomplished in our work in 2003 with the simulation of PSA utilizing
a laser pointer in teamwork applications on a virtual ISS [30]
Part
4 - Work Plan
The project will commence with extensive consultation with expert advisors at
several NASA centers as well as contractors and university collaborators. We
have already contacted the PSA and Intelligent Virtual Station (IVS) teams at
ARC, the Robonaut group at JSC, and will engage the ISS training teams at MSFC
and others. A series of standard questions will be posed and telephone, in-person
and online interviews carried out to create storyboards of the “day in the life”
of a hypothetical agent-enabled future ISS.
The second third of the project will focus on the building of the agent broker
software module and the 3D reconstructions of ISS with the new simulated agent
elements such as Robonaut and PSA. In this phase we will also develop Brahms
models for the entire scenario, focusing on human activities supported by agent
assistants in a complex task such as an EVA.
The final third of the project will see final assembly and test of the agent
broker together with Brahms models, the 3D elements of the simulation and execution
of the simulation.
Throughout the second and third portions of the project, all consulted teams
will be able to view progress and the final simulation through a standard web
browser interface running the OWorld/Adobe Atmosphere BrahmsVE plug-in. At the
end of the project, a full report of the successes and limitations of the simulation
will be delivered to all consulting groups and their input sought for possible
Phase II project proposals, if Phase II is to be solicited.
4.1 Project Work Plan by
task
Table
2 below provides our projected allocation of hours by labor category for the
eleven major tasks in this Phase I work plan and corresponds to our proposed
budget.
Table 2:
Work Plan
TASK
DESCRIPTION
PI
PM
TE
SE
CD
TG
1
Expert interviews
to establish storyboards for likely scenarios of agent activities aboard
a future ISS
20
2
0
0
0
0
2
Design of a unified
scenario embodying activities in a “day in the life” of an agent-enabled
ISS
30
5
0
0
0
0
3
Design and building
of Agent Broker
20
0
10
150
0
0
4
Creation of 3D
models for interior spaces, for ISS exterior and all agent and human figures
20
0
10
0
140
0
5
Implementation
of Brahms models scripted to the 3D models operating under the control
of the Agent Broker
15
0
10
20
0
0
6
Bringing up of
the first interior and exterior views, test
20
0
10
10
0
0
7
Integration of
interior and exterior scenarios into a single simulation
15
0
10
10
80
0
8
Initial testing of environment, sharing with expert
advisors
15
0
0
10
0
10
9
Iteration of environment
and scenarios
15
0
0
10
100
10
10
Finalization of
scenarios and models
15
0
0
10
40
5
11
Project report
generation
15
5
10
0
0
0
Total
All tasks:
200
12
60
220
360
25
Total
of all hours: 877
Where
the roles are defined as:
PI = Principal
Investigator
PM = Program
Manager
TE = Technical Experts
SE = Software
Engineer
CD = Content
Developer
TG = Test Group
4.2 Project Reference Website
The Project
Reference Website will be a center for ongoing progress and resources surrounding
the project, from the interview phase to the simulation evaluation. The site
will consist of the following components:
4.3
Project Work Schedule
This
section describes the work schedule for the Phase I effort (see Table 3 below).
DigitalSpace work is to be coordinated from its corporate offices located near
Santa Cruz California. DigitalSpace design and testing teams are located at
several places around the United States and internationally. This schedule assumes
a five-month project duration.
Table
3: Work Schedule
Month and Phases
1
2
3
4
5
Expert Interviews
¦
¦
Creation of architectural plan, specifications
+¦
¦
Commencement of software and content development
d
d
d
d
Mid Point Project Review
¦
¦+
Completion of development, commence testing
dt
t
Testing and iterative development
td
Final testing
t
Final Phase I Report
*
Where:
¦ = Specification and or Design & Documentation
d = Software and Content Development
t = Software Testing
+ = Status Report
* = Final Report
Part
5 - Related R/R&D
DigitalSpace
has been engaged in the development of virtual world platforms for eight years
and has successfully completed a number of major projects (see Part 8.1 below).
The PI and members of DigitalSpace have contributed numerous publications to
a variety of scientific and technical journals [32]. In addition to the work
with USRA/RIACS and NASA described in Part 2 above, we have collaborated with
numerous universities and companies.
5.1 NASA/RIACS Collaboration
The
Brahms team at USRA/RIACS, and the Agent iSolutions group will be involved in
a key supporting role in this Phase I deliverable as will expert advisors from
a number of NASA centers and collaborators.
5.2 External Cooperation
We
will be cooperating with Dr. Don Brutzman and his group at the Naval Postgraduate
School/MOVES Institute on the Extensible Modeling and Simulation Framework (XMSF),
an XML-based cross platform framework for simulation. Benefits to this cooperation
will be the possible use of an XMSF subset for the SOAP-based XML dialogue layer
which will be implemented within BrahmsVE and drive the PBA. This Phase I SBIR
work will in turn enable the XMSF working group to have an active intelligent
agent case study in which to test XMSF concepts. XMSF is a broadly based standards
effort that will bring interest and compatibility with simulation efforts at
the DOD and at other government agencies and contractors which will strengthen
the BrahmsVE offering and make possible broader SBIR Phase II development and
Phase III commercialization.
[2] Michael Alan Freed. “APEX, Simulating Human Performance in Complex, Dynamic Environments”, A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate School in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy, Field of Computer Science, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, June 1998
[3] Michael A. Freed, Roger W. Remington (2000) Making Human-Machine System Simulation a Practical Engineering Tool: An Apex Overview. In Proceedings of the 2000 International Conference on Cognitive Modeling, Groningen, Holland;
[4] Clancey, W. J., Sachs, P., Sierhuis, M., and van Hoof, R.1998. Brahms: Simulating Practice for Work Systems Design. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 49, 831-865.
[5] Sierhuis, M. 2001. Modeling and Simulating Work Practice; Brahms: A multiagent modeling and simulationlanguage for work system analysis and design. Ph.D. thesis, Social Science and Informatics (SWI), University of Amsterdam, SIKS Dissertation Series No. 2001-10, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, ISBN 90-6464-849-2.
[6] Sierhuis, M.; Bradshaw, J.M.; Acquisti, A.; Hoof, R.v.; Jeffers, R.; and Uszok, A. Human-Agent Teamwork and Adjustable Autonomy in Practice, in Proceedings of The 7th International Symposium on Artificial Intelligence,Robotics and Automation in Space (i-SAIRAS), Nara, Japan, 2003.
[7] M. Sierhuis and W. J. Clancey, Modeling and Simulating Work Practice: A human-centered method for work systems design, IEEE Intelligent Systems, vol. Volume 17(5), 2002.
[8] M. Sierhuis, A. Acquisti, and W. J. Clancey, Multiagent Plan Execution and Work Practice: Modeling plans and practices onboard the ISS, presented at 3rd International NASA Workshop on Planning and Scheduling for Space, Houston, TX, 2002.
[9] A. Acquisti, M. Sierhuis, W. J. Clancey, J. M. Bradshaw, Agent Based Modeling of Collaboration and Work Practices Onboard the International Space Station. Proceedings of the 11th Conference on Computer-Generated Forces and Behavior Representation, Orlando, FL, May 2002.
[10] Loftin, R.B., and Kenney, P.J., "Training the Hubble Space Telescope Flight Team," IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications, vol. 15, no. 5, pp. 31-37, Sep, 1995.
[12] Cater, J. P., and Huffman, S. D. Use of Remote Access Virtual Environment Network (RAVEN) for Coordinated IVA-EVA Astronaut Training and Evaluation. _Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments_ vol. 4, no. 2 (Spring 1995), p. 103-109. (Training for Hubble Space Telescope repair.)
[15] R. Papasin, B.J. Betts, R. Del Mundo, M. Guerrero, R.W. Mah, D.M. McIntosh, and E. Wilson, "Intelligent Virtual Station," Proceedings of the 7th International Symposium on Artificial Intelligence, Robotics and Automation in Space (i-SAIRAS 2003), Nara, Japan, May 2003.
[16] J. M. Bradshaw, M. Sierhuis, Y. Gawdiak, R. Jeffers, N. Suri, M. Greaves. (2001). Adjustable Autonomy and Teamwork for the Personal Satellite Assistant, in The IJCAI-01 Workshop on Autonomy, Delegation, and Control: Interacting with Autonomous Agents, Seattle, Washington, USA August 6, 2001. URL: http://csce.uark.edu/~hexmoor/AA01/IJCAI01-cfp.htm
[20] Rochlis, J, Clark, J.P. and Goza, M., "Space Station Telerobotics: Designing a Human-Robot Interface", AIAA Confeence on Space Station Utilization, Kennedy Space Center, October 2001.
[22] Jeff Rickel and W. Lewis Johnson. Task-oriented collaboration with embodied agents in virtual worlds. In J. Cassell, J. Sullivan, and S. Prevost, editors, Embodied Conversational Agents. MIT Press, Boston, 2000.
[24] Blais, C., Brutzman, D., Horner, D., and Nicklaus, S., "Web-Based 3D Technology for Scenario Authoring and Visualization: The Savage Project", Proceedings of the 2001 Interservice/Industry Training, Simulation, and Education Conference (I/ITSEC), Orlando, Florida, 2001.
[25] B. Damer, M. Sierhuis, R. van Hoof, B. Campbell, D. Rasmussen, M. Neilson, C. Kaskiris, S. Gold, G. Brandt (2001). Brahms VE: A Collaborative Virtual Environment for Mission Operations, Planning and Scheduling, Final Report for STTR Contract #NAS2-01019, October 8, 2001. URL: http://www.digitalspace.com/reports/sttr-techreport-final2.htm
Education: Bachelor of Science in Computer Science (University of Victoria, Canada, 1984); MSEE (University of Southern California, 1986)
Assignment: Mr. Damer will be the Principal Investigator for the SBIR Phase I effort. He will coordinate all interaction between DigitalSpace and its collaborators and NASA and other participants, be responsible for all staffing, technical design, reporting and documentation. Mr. Damer will devote a minimum of 100 hours per month of his time to this project.
Experience: Mr. Damer is the world's recognized expert on avatars and shared online graphical virtual spaces having created much of the early literature, conferences and awareness of the medium. Mr. Damer is a visiting scholar at the University of Washington Human Interface Technology Lab and a member of the staff at the San Francisco State Multimedia Studies Program. See http://www.digitalspace.com/papers for his recent writings.
Name: Stuart Gold (PM)
Years of Experience: 29
Position: Chief Architect (communities platform)
Education: Royal Institute of British Architects
Assignment: Stuart Gold will serve as a Program Manager for the project and structure the technology components and architecture for the BrahmsVE platform as well as coordinating the 3D modeling teams and provide any database and real-time community tools infrastructural support on the project and the XML based interfaces with Brahms.
Experience: Mr. Gold is a pioneer of online systems, starting with his work on transaction processing for Prestel in the 1970s and concluding most recently with his leadership in the design and delivery of online virtual worlds including: TheU Virtual University Architecture Competition, International Health Insurance Virtual Headquarters, and Avatars98-2001 online events. Mr. Gold also is the chief architect of the DigitalSpace communities platform, implementing XML and JS based community tools for use by all DigitalSpace projects. See http://www.digitalspace.com/papers for his recent writings.
Name: Bruce Campbell (Lead SE)
Position: Programmer/Architect, Oworld/Atmosphere
Experience: 6 years of experience at the University of Washington Human Interface Technologies Laboratory and the Department of Oceanography.
Assignment: JavaScript programming, interface with Brahms and 3D content, testing, open source strategy, university and distance learning partnerships.
Name: Galen Brandt (Marketing – Phases I and II)
Position: New business development, DigitalSpace
Experience: 26 years including creating market strategies for Dun and Bradstreet, SUNY Fashion Institute of Technology, DoToLearn and others.
Assignment: Market development for Phase I and II.
Name: Dave Rasmussen (TE)
Position: Member of the 3D Design Studio, DigitalSpace
Experience: 9 years experience in virtual world design, skills: 3DS Max, Java, Active Worlds, Adobe Atmosphere, PHP/MySQL database development
Assignment: Directing team performing 3D modeling and animation, testing
Name: Merryn Neilson (Lead CD)
Position: Member of the 3D Design Studio, DigitalSpace
Experience: 9 years experience in virtual world design, skills: 3DS Max, Java, Active Worlds, Adobe Atmosphere
Assignment: Web design on project, 3D worlds, avatar design, testing
Name: Peter Newman (SE)
Position: Developer in C++, JS, PHP, HTML, 3D Design Studio, DigitalSpace
Assignment: Programmer of OWorld engine extensions.
Name: Ryan Norkus (CD)
Position: Graphic artist, 3d modeler and animator, 3D Design Studio,DigitalSpace
Assignment: Focusing on the automation of animated sequences
6.2 NASA and Non-NASA Advisors
to the project (beyond Brahms team)
The following individuals have agreed
to provide technical and scientific advisement to this project.
·Dr. Charles Neveu, ARC/QSS, PSA
Team – advising on Phase I PSA/ISS application (implemented)
·Mike Sims, ARC – advising on
rover and surface mission design, assisted with JPL/MER demonstration project
·Dr. Geoff Briggs, Scientific
Director, Center for Mars Exploration, ARC – advising on terrain modeling,
surface mission design, commissioned whole-planet Mars terrain demonstration
project.
·Dr. Tom Furness III, HIT Lab
University of Washington – technology transfer advisor
·Dr. Don Brutzman, Naval Postgraduate
School, MOVES institute
·Captain Richard O’Neill, Directory,
Highlands Group
·Dr. Steve Ellis, ARC
·Dr. Robert Mah, Smart Systems
Research Lab, ARC
Part
7: Relationship with Phase II or other Future R/R&D
DigitalSpace
has made a multi-year commitment to the development of the vision we share with
the NASA and RIACS team members who have made this effort possible. Briefly
stated, our joint mission is to create the world’s most comprehensive, graphically
realistic, collaborative work practice, mission planning and operations development
environment. Successful completion of this proposed SBIR Phase I will set the
stage for full multi-agent human-centric production packaging of BrahmsVE. We
expect to engage multiple NASA and outside customers for BrahmsVE within a Phase
II SBIR to qualify the platform for full Phase III commercialization. At the
start of Phase III, DigitalSpace plans to either finance its initial operation
with customer revenues or venture capital, or if no venture capital is obtained,
the principals are committed to self-finance the venture during Phase III.
Part
8: Company Information and Facilities
DigitalSpace Corporation
was incorporated in the state of California on August 24, 1995. DigitalSpace
is a company organized to innovate and commercialize in the multi-user virtual
worlds and virtual communities market. The company’s business is based on the
following concepts:
That the Internet and especially
3D virtual worlds, voice and text environments, can be effective meeting places
and enable communication, learning and team based projects. DigitalSpace uses
these spaces daily in a proof of concept that a company can base its entire
operations on them;
As the need for teleworking,
distance learning, virtual communities of interest and Visualization grows,
so will grow the capabilities of ordinary consumer personal computers to deliver
real-time 3D multi-user experiences. It is the convergence between these needs
and the capabilities of consumer computing hardware that will create a large
industry producing and hosting virtual worlds and communities in the future.
On these two premises, DigitalSpace
has provided solutions for dozens of clients to produce both demonstration and
fully functional virtual spaces since 1995. See our web site at http://www.digitalspace.com
for a portfolio of projects and clients. We will feature a number of them here
for their relevance to this SBIR proposal:
8.2
Equipment used
All DigitalSpace member-owners have
at least one personal computer connected on the Internet (most have IBM PCs,
Pentium class, while others have Macintoshes or both in their local offices
as well as other equipment).
Part
9: Subcontracts and Consultants
DigitalSpace
Corporation will use outside consultants and employees on this project.
Part
10: Commercial Applications Potential
There are
several classes of customer for a BrahmsVE environment having a local, autonomous
agent capability.
Geoff
Briggs and Michael Sims of Ames informs us that future Mars (Mars Science Laboratory
’09) and Titan missions will include the use of drills, rotorcraft and airplanes. While
these are strictly robotic missions there will be “humans in the loop” in the
form of significant science backrooms and mission control.
Julian
Gomez of RIACS, who is working on early renditions of the Sim-Station project
for RIACS at Ames informs us that there will be need for 3D realistic representations
of systems and people within the ISS to complement the schematic-style representation
of station subsystems. Julian has been equipped with a running version of BrahmsVE.
Greater operator effectiveness
through improved telepresence interfaces
Projects at ARC and JSC are focusing on the use of
tactile feedback interface for collision awareness between workspace and avatar
objects, and robot structure, force feedback devices for awareness of manipulator
and payload inertia, gripping force and the use of stereoscopic display systems
and spatial tracking of head, arms, etc are all considered key to more effective
teleoperation. Based on its flexibility using open Web standards, we expect
that BrahmsVE will have a role to play in teleoperation and that we will be
able to build interfaces to tactile and force feedback systems, bringing this
key interface modality into BrahmsVE.
ARC: Virtual Digital Human Based on the new Mission Control Center System (MCCS) Architecture framework,
integrated support for virtual-digital-human-in-the-loop and tele-operational
interfaces is being promoted for flight and ground operations development, analyses,
training, and support. The main result desired is an interactive system that
enhances operator and IVA/EVA task efficiency via the tele-operational technologies
and distributed collaborative virtual environments. The implementation of the
Virtual Digital Human (VDH) seeks to create anatomical, biomechanical and anthropometric
functionality to fully simulate the somatic components and systems of the human
body. BrahmsVE utilizing the Adobe Atmosphere Viewpoint technology for procedural
(skeletal) skinned human body forms within shared virtual environments may be
able to meet this challenge.
NASA educational outreach and
Space Camp
Immersive virtual worlds, virtual digital human (VDH), and 3D simulation modeling,
have become a significant vehicle for NASA's effort to generate and communicate
knowledge/understanding to K-12 and college/university students on topics such
as the International Space Station and Space Shuttle/Space Transport System
(STS) operations, Robotics, Intravehicular/Extravehicular activities, Mission
Control Center conduct, interplanetary space flight, and microgravity simulation.
BrahmsVE can go a long way to helping NASA enable this kind of outreach and
could even become a fixture at NASA Space Camp at several centers.
10.2
Potential non-NASA government, educational and commercial applications
DOD and DOE – energy security design
application
In
January 2003 BrahmsVE was presented at a special workshop at the Arlington Institute
held for the Office of Secretary of Defense. A prototype virtual windfarm [27]
was developed utilizing Adobe Atmosphere, OWorld and the BrahmsVE engine. The
Havok physics engine allowed us to show windfarm KW/Hour production scales for
different configurations of turbines. Coupling this with a geographical information
system provided by GeoFusion Inc. allowed us to show the DOD staffers and other
energy experts how sites for windfarm power could be selected and then the production
output modeled. It is planned to present this work again at a Highlands Forum
program for the DOD at the end of 2003. It is felt that a DOE presentation will
follow.
Defense
design, training and operations applications
The
military will be using semi and fully autonomous agents working closely to support
troops and command in surveillance and combat missions throughout the 21st
Century. Therefore we expect a great deal of interest surrounding a product
in this space. We are already in contact with the Naval Postgraduate School
MOVES Institute about cooperation on and adopting a new XML based standard in
simulation communications.
K-12
and College, Education and Museums
The
current set of NASA BrahmsVE applications could be repurposed into educational
course modules for schools. In discussions with William and Carol Kerney of
San Diego K-12 Schools, and the Planetary Society in Pasadena, California, we
have determined that there is a need and a market for student spaces in which
they can construct space stations or colonies on the Moon or Mars and design
all of the subsystems and human/agent activities. Of course, agent-based virtual
environments can also be of great value to museums and science learning centers
such as the Exploratorium in San Francisco, where we have been in contact with
Technical Director Larry Shaw, who is interested in hosting an event for the
MER landing in January 2004 and using our BrahmsVE MER modeling done for JPL.
Robot games – educational and entertainment
applications
Robot
“wars” are one of the most popular forms of entertainment in the popular media
and robot game competition are some of the finest learning events for K-12 and
college engineering students and faculty. Ames sponsors such events with CMU
students and high schools. We have communicated with the organizers of the Ames
events and demonstrated them BrahmsVE. It is planned to partner with them and
the local chapter of the Robotics Society of America to develop a kids’ robot
design lab and competition space within the virtual spaces made possible by
BrahmsVE. Massive multi-player online games are experiencing a large amount
of investment and commercial interest. BrahmsVE is a competent platform for
the creation of a successful multiplayer online game both as a learning tool
and as a pay-per-play tournament environment. We plan to seek support for a
commercial, online robot games application. We have secured the trademark “digibots”
for this project and are creating a business plan.
Industrial
design, training and operations applications
From
factory floor automation to security systems, complex environments where humans
work in tandem with mobile agents or other autonomous machine systems all need
a comprehensive model-based environment with high fidelity 3D re-creation during
both design, training and operations phases. Industrial training is a multi-billion
dollar per year industry and BrahmsVE is uniquely suited to enter this market,
running on industry standard platforms.
Consumer
market research for personal wireless assistants
The
emerging era of wireless, wearable personal assistants is picking up momentum
with ever more sophisticated cell phones and other handheld devices. In a real
sense, each of these devices represents the pairing of humans with machines,
all which the BrahmsVE human/agent augmentation design environment can model
for product design purposes. DigitalSpace plans to make use of its business
plan developed as part of Phase I to obtain private venture support for a number
of opportunities, including the robot games application. Such a venture will
be approached in tandem with the Brahms/Agent iSolutions group. In addition,
DigitalSpace’s member-owners are committed to self-financing if no venture capital
is obtained.
Part
11: Similar Proposals and Awards
DigitalSpace
Corporation has received past support enabling the creation of the fundamental
building blocks for the current proposed work from a Phase I STTR awarded in
2000 (Contract #NAS2-01019), through an SBIR Phase I awarded in 2002 (Contract
#NAS2-03134) and through RIACS. DigitalSpace
is submitting no other proposals similar to this 2003 SBIR Phase I.
