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Category: Multi-Sensor Integration & Design

Parasitic Power Pack (P3)

KBSI is developing an innovative power pack for remotely deployed buoys.  The buoys enable communication, via a distributed sensor network, among the Navy’s underwater assets and assets above water.  The P3 technology uses wave power rather than batteries to power the buoy sensors.

The U.S. Navy and commercial oceanographic sensor manufacturers are building a distributed at sea communications network capability that will enable communications among various platforms such as Unmanned Undersea Vehicles (UUVs), Unmanned Surface Vehicles (USVs), and even other oceanographic sensors.  By coupling the undersea communications network with the sea mainstream Global Information Grid (GIG) communications infrastructure, the distributed network hopes to enable end-to-end connectivity among surface, air, shore, undersea platforms, and undersea sensors.  The goal of this network is to multiply the capabilities of existing platforms by enabling two-way communication both below and above the water and, in effect, enabling ultimate Network Centric Warfare (NCW) capabilities.

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Entropy-Trust-Homology Operational Security (ETHOS™)

The ETHOS™ method is used for securing trust based on the information exchanged between the different nodes of a sensor network.  The initiative investigated various trust metrics and algorithms to define a set of trust metrics that use information entropy as the basis for calculating the reputation of particular nodes.

In this U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) – Wright-Patterson AFB funded effort KBSI developed an Entropy-Trust-Homology Operational Security (ETHOS™) method for securing trust that is based on the information exchanged between the different nodes of a sensor network.  Trust entropy metrics are created based on both the patterns of information entropy flow between nodes and on usage behavior.  Usage behavior includes both user behavior (user monitoring) as well as CPU behavior (process monitoring).  Each node in the system creates a set of trust metrics that corresponds to the set of directly observable neighboring nodes.  A trust metric that reflects the reputation of a particular node could then be calculated by the direct and indirect querying of nodes in the network.

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Faraday Chromate

The Faraday Chromate intitiative analyzed Electro Impedance Spectroscopy (EIS) data to study the effectiveness and life of particular coatings on accelerated corrosion environments.

KBSI has developed technology that performs data mining of maintenance data, estimates balance life, and delivers the right information at the correct level and appropriate time to the maintenance decision maker.  This technology will support maintenance depots by providing a sound basis for decisions and judgments in the corrosion arena.  This will enable the Department of Defense to replace the current body of subjective, disjointed, and anecdotal information about weapon system corrosion with credible information that is based on metrics and data, leading to substantial decreases in the maintenance costs associated with detecting, repairing, and tracking corrosive areas.  In collaboration with Faraday Technologies Inc., one of the leading electrochemistry experts, we have been very productive in working toward this goal.

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Adaptive Trajectory Reshaping & Control System (ATRC)

The ATRC initiative developed real time solution techniques and algorithms for a reconfigurable control and guidance system for autonomous reusable launch vehicles (RLVs).  ATRC includes on-line parameter learning and real time reshaping of vehicle trajectories under uncertain damage/failure scenarios.

The U.S. Air Force, to keep pace with the demands of homeland security and global operations, is exploring methods for improved space utilization.  A significant impediment to increased space utilization is the huge cost of launching operations, and the Air Force is investigating more affordable launch operations via a number of Reusable Launch Vehicle (RLV) programs.  Part of the focus is on maintaining the economic viability of RLVs by enhancing operations safety and reliability;  i.e., to improve RLV capabilities for responding to various uncertainties and emerging situations.

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Agile, Wireless-Enabled Workflows for Ship Manufacturing & Repair (AWSM™)

The AWSM™ technology represents a new paradigm for ship manufacturing that redesigns manufacturing processes and uses computing and wireless technologies to deliver information–activity statuses, resource availability, design and scheduling changes–to every user, work crew, or process involved in the project.

A central challenge in any large-scale manufacturing environment is to effectively adjust to production and procurement glitches that ripple across and continually threaten manufacturing schedules.  The ship manufacturing industry is no exception.  With manufacturing projects that stretch over years and involve numerous divisions, materials, facilities, and manpower, how can U.S. shipyards achieve the kind of proactive flexibility needed to develop and maintain the most efficient and cost-effective production schedules?

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Intelligent Asset Tracking & Management System (IATMS)

IATMS is a unified framework for geolocation knowledge that provides instant visualization of MRO assets, improving asset utilization and scheduling and MRO flow-times.  IATMS also provides knowledge discovery for equipment task and resource relationships using geolocation and other data sources.

The Air Force’s Tinker Air Force Base (TAFB), Oklahoma City Air Logistics Center (OC-ALC) and the Hill Air Force Base (HAFB), Ogden Air Logistics Center (OO-ALC) are responsible for the maintenance, repair, and overhaul of billions of dollars worth of aircraft each year.  In addition to the actual nuts and bolts work on aircraft, a significant undertaking in itself, MRO activities involve the coordinated planning, scheduling, and moving of not only the aircraft, but also the thousands of pieces of ground support equipment (GSE) and other assets used in MRO work.  At Tinker, more than 3500 items, ranging from huge cranes and air-conditioners to wrenches and drills, are required for MRO work that is spread over an area the size of a small city.  MRO planning and coordination is a tightly orchestrated endeavor:  aircraft, parts, and GSE required for each step, large items that can be difficult and time consuming to stage and deploy, must be in place when and where they are needed and must accommodate the requirements of other ongoing MRO work.  A lag at any step in the schedule—the result of movement conflicts or double scheduled GSE, for example—can have a ripple effect, impacting other downstream MRO work and leading to missed deadlines, snowballing cost overruns, and, most significantly, compromised mission readiness.

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Intelligent System for Abstraction & Integration of Instrumentation Hardware (ISAIIH)

ISAIIH is an XML-based language that acts as an intermediary between Instrumentation Support Systems (ISS) and the vendor-specific languages of leveraged systems.  The Intelligent System for Abstraction & Integration of Instrumentation Hardware (ISAIIH) methodology was developed and documented with a focus on aviation Test & Evaluation (T&E).  The effort was motivated by the requirement that current Instrumentation Support Systems (ISS) use vendor-specific languages in order to support the programming of instrumentation systems prior to testing and evaluation.

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Framework for Intelligent Support of Smart Transducers (FIST™)

Test and Evaluation (T&E) at Edwards AFB involves collecting large volumes of data that must then be processed for display, analysis, and storage in the digital world of micro-controllers, processors, and computer networks.  This data processing challenge is the focus of Edwards AFB’s development of a “smart transducer” framework that supports controller-to-transducer and transducer-to-transducer processing for their T&E operations.  KBSI’s Framework for Intelligent Support of Smart Transducers (FIST™) initiative built a framework that allows for a plug-and-play capability for large-scale smart transducer deployments.  The FIST™ technology exploits the inherent benefits of the smart transducer technology and revolutionizes the way in which flight test and instrumentation engineers design, implement, test and manage sensor networks.

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