A -- RESILIENT SYSTEMS AND OPERATIONS (RSO) PROJECT

Notice Date

February 23, 2001

Contracting Office

NASA/Ames Research Center, JA:M/S 241-1, Moffett Field, CA 94035-1000

ZIP Code

94035-1000

Solicitation Number

RFI-2-38006-RRG

Response Due

March 26, 2001

Point of Contact

Ronnee R. Gonzalez, Contracting Officer, Phone (650) 604-4386, Fax (650) 604-4357, Email rgonzalez@mail.arc.nasa.gov

E-Mail Address

Ronnee R. Gonzalez (rgonzalez@mail.arc.nasa.gov)

Description

This Request for Information (RFI) is for information and planning purposes and to allow industry the opportunity to verify reasonableness and feasibility of the requirement, as well as promote competition. Background, Project Description, Information Requested: NASA Vision: NASA is an investment in America's future. As explorers, pioneers, and innovators, we boldly expand frontiers in air and space to inspire and serve America and to benefit the quality of life on Earth. NASA Mission: (1) To advance and communicate scientific knowledge and understanding of the Earth, the solar systems, and the universe. (2) To advance human exploration, use, and development of space. (3) To research, develop, verify, and transfer advanced aeronautics and space technologies. The Design for Safety (DFS) program is designed to support the NASA Vision and Mission Goals by reducing risk in all phases of the life-cycle and by providing technologies to help build inherently safe and robust systems. DFS is a new NASA initiative designed to reduce risk in all phases of the life-cycle of aerospace systems and to provide technologies to make these systems inherently safe and robust. Analysis of recent aerospace mishap reports point to three broad problem categories: (a) risk identification, assessment and management, (b) institutional knowledge management, and (c) system resiliency and fault tolerance. DFS is performing a review to determine what technologies are available or under development to support each of these areas. This RFI focuses on the third area, the Resilient Systems and Operations (RSO) project. RSO seeks intelligent, system-level assessment, control, and management solutions to inform and assist vehicle and mission operators in mitigating life-cycle risks and unanticipated hazards during operations. Research within this element will focus on in-flight or on-operation strategies to ensure complex mission success, such as vehicle health assessment and management; adaptive and/or autonomous control schemes; and human-machine advisories and interfaces. Inherent in this endeavor is monitoring, management, and control using a multi-level approach that includes components, subsystems, and integrated systems. This project will also develop integrated system testing and validation technologies and system servicing and processing solutions to mitigate risks throughout the system life cycle. RSO will address the following specific hazards through development and infusion of advanced technology methods into all NASA enterprise missions to provide highly adaptive resilient systems for intelligent response to hazards: (a) Vehicle loss of control or damage to airframe on any vehicle, (b) Component failure on any vehicle and how to repair rapidly and safely, (c) Operator error on-board or on the ground (sometimes due to uninformed operator), (d) Unknown operating environments, (e) Software errors (insufficient system test and validation). The Resilient Systems and Operations Project consists of four elements: (1) Adaptive Operations & Controls (AOC) -- This element will develop technologies that utilize pertinent vehicle health information to assess and predict vehicle dynamic response and capabilities. New technologies will efficiently provide integrated flight, propulsion and structural mode control & recovery in the presence of faults, failures, uncertainty and changing operational/environmental conditions. Capabilities for mission planning and trajectory management, human interfaces, and operations management capabilities will be developed within this element of RSO. One sub-task within AOC will focus on real-time control and will mature technologies that enable a vehicle to maintain stability or recover in the presence of vehicle and environmental uncertainties and changes. These technologies will optimize achievable control performance through integration of motion control, power, propulsion, and structural subsystems. Another sub-task within AOC will focus on autonomous vehicle operations and will mature technologies that will enable automated mission scheduling and recoveries, execution of plans/schedules, and system-wide reactive control and state estimation of the vehicle and its environment. (2) Vehicle Health Assessment (VHA) -- This includes subsystem or system-wide software technologies for intelligent vehicle health assessment. This element will develop, mature and integrate in-flight and ground technologies for performing self-diagnostics and prognostics and generate intelligent maintenance advisories. These technologies will replace current inadequate human-intensive techniques. An automated diagnostics & prognostics sub-task will mature embedded real-time reasoning system technologies to integrate information from multiple sources such as models, rules, trees, and sensors throughout the life cycle. (3) Resilient Hardware (RH) -- This element focuses on resilient hardware and related sensor fusion and communication architectures. RH will develop and mature intelligent sensor systems and integrate them with innovative communication architectures so that effective sensor fusion is enabled. In some cases the sensor systems will be highly integrated with the materials being monitored so that the fabrication process of the "smart materials" is an important part of the effort. (4) Risk-Directed System Test & Validation (RDSTV) -- The technologies sought in first three elements of RSO will result in vehicles with complex health management architectures. This element is looking for creative verification technologies, including advanced testing, to certify or increase the confidence that these complex systems indeed meet their reliability requirements. This will require major improvements over the current state-of-the-art in testing practice, because the spectrum of situations to be considered will typically be larger (by orders of magnitude) than more conventional systems. This has to do both with the combinatorial explosion of the possible interactions between multiple components, and with the requirement that resilient systems be able to cope with unanticipated situations. The proposed technologies should address and optimize the trade-off between the confidence level that can be achieved and the costs incurred. RSO is looking for risk-based verification solutions biased towards critical paths in the system, so that the residual risk after verification is minimized. Contributions are sought regarding technologies that can be deployed at any point in the life cycle (design, implementation, verification, operation, management) in support of risk-directed system-level verification. Technologies and methods for effective human advisories and interfaces through out the vehicle life cycle will be important for all four of the RSO elements. Major technologies to be developed within the RSO project may include: (a) Sensor Validation Software, (b) Data processing architectures for MEMS sensor networks, intelligent sensors and smart components, (c) Model checking for formal software verification and validation, (d) Influence diagrams and Bayesian analysis for real-time decision support, (e) Reinforcement learning for optimal control, (f) Hybrid Planners and Executive, (g) Self Learning software, (h) Trend analysis, (i) Virtual Reality/Data visualization, (j) Soft computing for adaptive control, (k) Neural Controllers, (l) Model-based programming for advanced diagnostics and reactive control, (m) Advanced Built-in and Active Component Test, (n) Condition-Based Maintenance and Scheduling, (o) Remote Collaborative Maintenance, (p) Virtual & Robotic Inspection, (q) Robotic Maintenance, (r) Maintenance advisories/Queries for humans, (s) Automated test generation from test goals and system models, (t) Reliability metrics for resilient systems, (u) Risk-based metrics for test coverage, (v) Fault-tolerant architectures, (w) Fault-tolerant Software (e.g. checkpoint and rollback, software redundancy), (x) Static analysis of software for fault detection, (y) Runtime monitoring of software for fault detection, (z) Architecture validation, (aa) Simulation software and software testbeds. Information Requested One document, comprised of two major sections, is required in response to this request for information. Section 1. In the first section, NASA is seeking capabilities and qualification statement that demonstrates that the responder would be a suitable candidate to comment on and provide answers to the technical scope of RSO as described above. The capabilities and qualifications statement shall include details that: (a) Show past experience in development/implementation of autonomous (aerospace and/or non-aerospace) vehicles, vehicle health management/monitoring, and software and communication architectures for intelligent vehicle systems. (b) Demonstrate an understanding of state of the art tools as applied to vehicle operations and life cycle management. The life cycle elements covered should include conceptual studies through the retirement of a product. (c) For commercially available products: (1) Indicate how large a problem or customer space in which the responder has successfully applied their products. Provide the number of customers using products in the following ranges: (i) Category 1: 1-10 customers, (ii) Category 2: 10-100 customers, (iii) Category 3: 100-500 customers, (iv) Category 4: Over 500 customers. (2) In addition, indicate the average number of users per customer, and the complexity or size of the application. Compare market penetration and functional capability to similar or competing products. Section 2. In the second section, NASA is seeking technology assessments, evaluations, or recommendations regarding the technical scope of RSO. The information provided by the responder should include: (a) Details of a recommended technology development and implementation approach, including tools and methodologies that would be utilized. (b) "Lessons-learned" and metrics for cost/time savings based on past experience in development of similar technologies. (c) Inventive ideas on how to best leverage existing similar commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) technologies or those under development in other Government programs. (d) A rough-order of magnitude estimate of time and cost for the development and implementation, and the generalized approach used to generate this information. (e) What process would be employed implement suggested technologies? (f) What assumed software and hardware architecture and systems would be required to develop and maintain the recommended technologies? Comments or questions surrounding this RFI may be forwarded to Ronnee R. Gonzalez, at the address herein, via electronic transmission to rgonzalez@mail.arc.nasa.gov, by March 8, 2001. To ensure clarity, telephone comments will not be accepted. Response to all comments and questions will be posted as an attachment to this synopsis. The response document should be no more than 50 pages (8.5" x 11") in length and shall be submitted electronically (hard copy accepted) by March 26, 2001. Additional back-up material may be provided in an appendix. Please ensure that the format for electronic documents are compatible with MS Office 97 or Adobe Acrobat Reader. If other software applications are used, please contact the Contracting Officer to ensure compatibility. This synopsis is not to be construed as a commitment by the Government, nor will the Government pay for the information solicited. Any questions regarding this announcement should be directed to the identified point of contact. An ombudsman has been appointed -- See NASA Specific Note "B". Any documents related to this procurement will be available over the Internet. These documents will be in Microsoft Office 97 format and will reside on a World Wide Web (WWW) server, which may be accessed using a WWW browser application. The Internet site, or URL, for the NASA/ARC Business Opportunities home page is http://nais.msfc.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/EPS/bizops.cgi?group=C&pin=21 It is the offeror's responsibility to monitor the Internet cite for the release of the solicitation and amendments (if any). Any referenced notes can be viewed at the following URL: http://genesis.gsfc.nasa.gov/nasanote.html

Web Link

Click here for the latest information about this notice (http://nais.msfc.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/EPS/bizops.cgi?gr=D&pin=21#RFI-2-38006-RRG)

Record

Loren Data Corp. 20010227/ASOL014.HTM (D-054 SN50E4M2)