All complex systems use procedures as the core of their operations. Industries such as refineries, petrochemical plants, power plants (both nuclear and conventional), pharmaceutical plants and ethanol plants currently use manual procedures represented in PDF, similar to the current NASA state-of-practice. The benefit that NASA will receive from moving to electronic, automated procedures can be duplicated in many of these industries. Plants that already have some level of automation such that telemetry and commanding is available electronically are the most likely to adopt this technology. Just as at NASA, safety, workflow and cost concerns must be addressed before this technology will be adopted.
We have identified four NASA programs that can immediately use the results of this project to enhance their current and future capabilities. These programs are: * Constellation Procedure Application Software Suite (CxPASS): This program is chartered with providing software support and requirements for both on-board and ground procedure viewing and execution for all Constellation vehicles including Orion. Phase I discussions with CxPASS personnel have identified key areas of mutual interest including procedure viewing, procedure editing and situation awareness. * Mission Controls Technology (MCT): This program is producing the next generation command and telemetry software application for the Mission Control Center (MCC). This project is intended to provide procedure capability to MCT. * Automation for Operations (A4O). This research program is producing prototype software systems to demonstrate advanced automation capabilities to Constellation. We expect that the software produced in this project will be used by A4O as their procedure display environment for forthcoming demonstrations. * Lunar Surface Systems (LSS). This program is developing concepts for Lunar habitation and robotics infrastructure. Procedures will be a core part of operating Lunar surface assets. This project can provide procedure assistance software to LSS for testing of their operations.
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