<title>Hybrid synthetic-vision system for the X-38 crew return vehicle</title>

Abstract

The X-38 program began in early 1995 and is developing a series of test vehicles to demonstrate the low-cost technologies and methods required to develop a fully functional CRV that can rapidly return asfronauts from onboard the International Space Station (155) to earth. The X-38 program uses a gradual buildup approach and where appropriate, is taking advantage ofadvanced technologies that may help improve safety, decrease cost, reduce development time, and outperform traditional technologies. Four atmospheric test vehicles and one space-rated vehicle will be developed and tested during the X38 program. The atmospheric test vehicles are own as vehicle 131 (V131), vehicle 132 (V132), vehicle 131R (V13IR), and vehicle 133 (V133). The space-rated vehicle that will fly on the Shuffle in 2002, as a payload bay experiment, is known as vehicle 201 (V201).Since windshields and windows add considerable weight and risk to vehicle design, all the X-38 vehicles employ a windowless cockpit design. This windowless design philosophy and the desire to give crew members and operations personnel as much situational awareness as possible has allowed for the development and demonstration of the benefits of using a synthetic vision system. The system provides a simulated real-time 3D perspective that can be used during allweather conditions and during day or night operations. The information being displayed on the system is enriched with a wide variety of flight-related information. The system developed has been successfully used during live flight-testing of V132 and Vl3lR, While the advantages of a synthetic vision system are considerable, the major disadvantage of such a system is it's limitation to display a synthetic environment using "static" data that was acquired by an aircraft or satellite, at some point in the past The next generation synthetic environment system being developed, which we are calling the "3D-HUD", will take advantage of a video camera system to fuse live video imagery with the a computer generated synthetic scene. This hybrid system can display a dynamic, real-time scene ofthe region ofinterest, enriched by information from a synthetic environment system. On the X-38 program, this technology will help operators identify any large and significant obstacles that can pose a safety concern during the fmal flight phase ofour test vehicles.

Science crew operations and utility testbed

“…The autonomy system provides support for controlling SCOUT 1 and is called the generic autonomous mobile robot architecture (GAMA). GAMA was created at NASA's JSC and has been deployed on several mobile robots over the past six years (Hirsh et al, 2006). Of principle interest to the SCOUT project is how to construct a robot that, as part of an EVA team that includes humans, results in a superior effort versus a human-only team.…”

“…to provide a mobile, generic platform to remotely monitor and control various vehicles (Plate 6). The visualization provided to operators uses advanced visualization technology based on synthetic vision (Delgado et al, 1999) and hybrid synthetic vision (Delgado et al, 2001(Delgado et al, , 2000 concepts originally developed to teleoperate and perform flight following activities of the X-38 vehicles. ACES performed a variety of teleoperation and monitoring tasks during the Meteor Crater testing.…”