Small Business/SBIR

NASA Flies With Java™ Software

INCREASED AVIATION SAFETY AND MORE productive flight research could result from innovative software developed through a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) contract awarded to a Hanover, New Hampshire, company by NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center in Edwards, California. The new Ring Buffered Network Bus™ (RBNB™) software, developed by Creare, Inc., allows different computer platforms to interface with each other in real time.

The software flew its maiden voyage in August, aboard an L-1011 aircraft owned and operated by Orbital Sciences Corporation of Dulles, Virginia. NASA engineers are using the L-1011 aircraft for the Adaptive Performance Optimization (APO) test program to develop drag reduction technology for increased efficiency of existing or future aircraft fleets.

The RBNB™ allows for the integration of all possible data sources in a massively decentralized decision-making computing environment to identify and address risk-increasing events before they turn into accidents. The software was incorporated into the on-board research engineering test station to automate data analyses that previously could only be performed after a flight. Dryden engineers used the new collaborative computing software to provide an immediate assessment of each flight maneuver as it progressed.

Originally commissioned as a tool for developing distributed signal-processing applications specifically for aircraft vibration testing, the resulting software design was capable of much more. The RBNB™ is actually a general-purpose, real-time queuing and messaging system with features similar to data acquisition systems. It is written in the Java™ computer language developed by Sun Microsystems, Inc, of Palo Alto, California, and it communicates via standard Internet protocols.

Glenn Gilyard, principal investigator on the APO project at Dryden, is pleased with the new online analysis capability. "This flight demonstration of adaptive configuration optimization for performance enhancement is a first for this technology," Gilyard said. "This software is an integral part of the real-time optimization process, and it performed flawlessly. The RBNB™'s role was key to providing instantaneous results, which greatly enhanced productivity of the flight."

Larry Freudinger, Dryden's project manager responsible for developing the RBNB™ software, said the tests have helped future application developers. "The lessons learned here have had a positive influence on the product, and the risks have been reduced for application developers who will soon have the option of using the RBNB™ as a new commercial product. By using distributed computing tools over standard Internet protocols, I believe the world of flight test has taken a significant step toward a more productive future."

The RBNB™ has many commercial applications to the aircraft, the health care and other industries.

For more information, contact Larry Freudinger at Dryden Flight Research Center.
Call: 805/258-3542, E-mail: l.freudinger@dfrc.nasa.gov
Or contact Matt Miller at Creare, Inc. Call: 603/643-3800.
Please mention you read about it in Innovation.

This modified L-1011 aircraft was used for the first testing of a real-time software assessment tool that interfaces different computer platforms via common computer language. Increased air safety and more productive flight research could result by integrating all possible data sources to identify and address risk-increasing events.