Overview

The UCT Group employs user-centered design processes to create technology based on user needs. The group’s research focus is to develop component based computing technologies, the goal being ubiquitous collaborative computing where the complexity for the users is that of their tasks, not of their tools.

Project List (Active)

Mission Control Technologies (MCT)

NASA Ames, in collaboration with Johnson Space Center (JSC), is building a set of frameworks to enable mission operations software systems to be assembled from flexible collections of user-composable components. Components may be assembled and modified by users, with the level of composability and permissions controlled by policies. By assembling systems from components on a common framework, the traditional “walls” of monolithic applications are eliminated, as are the heterogeneous code bases and functional overlaps that come with traditional software applications. User composition empowers users to make rapid changes to software, within the constraints of organizational policy, without the need for code changes from platform service providers. In turn, platform service providers have the capability to provide certified, yet flexible systems.

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Planetary Data System (PDS)

The PDS is a distributed archive of data products from NASA planetary missions. PDS actively manages the archive to maximize its usefulness, and it has become a basic resource for scientists around the world. PDS is composed of eight teams, called “nodes.” Five of these are science discipline nodes, focusing on Atmospheres, Geosciences, Planetary Plasma Interactions, Rings, and Small Bodies. The remaining three nodes provide systems engineering, navigation and ephemeris information, and image processing support. PDS is sponsored by NASA's Science Mission Directorate (SMD). All PDS-produced products are peer-reviewed, well-documented, and easily accessible via a system of online catalogs that are organized by planetary disciplines.

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Project List (Inactive)

Clarissa
Clarissa is an experimental voice-enabled procedure reader, developed during a three year project starting in early 2002, which enables astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS) to navigate complex procedures using only spoken input and output. This offers significant advantages for carrying out hands- and eyes-busy tasks in the challenging environment of microgravity. Clarissa has a vocabulary of about 260 words and supports about 75 different commands, including reading steps, scrolling forwards or backwards in the procedure, moving to an arbitrary new step, reviewing non-current steps, adding or removing voice notes, displaying pictures and setting alarms or timers. An unpiloted Russian cargo craft delivered Clarissa to the ISS on Christmas Day, 2004, and it was sucessfully tested by Astronaut John Phillips on June 27, 2005. To the best of our knowledge, Clarissa is the first spoken dialogue system in space.
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Fabric Mission System Component Toolkit

Goal Nets Visualisation and Editing for Mars Science Lab

Mars Exploration Rover Human Centered Computing
Develop technologies and procedures to increase productivity of surface operations for Mars Exploration Rover 03 missions based on human centered computing techniques.

MERBoard
A large screen interactive worksurface to support collaboration during surface operations for the Mars Exploration Rover 03 Missions.

Regulus
Regulus is an Open Source platform used for building complex spoken command grammars, which has been developed since 2001 by a consortium whose main partners have been NASA Ames, the University of Geneva, and Fluency Voice Technology. The central idea is to develop a single English grammar, based on general linguistic principles, from which one can derive application-specific command grammars using example-based methods. Software available from the Open Source siteincludes the general grammar, compilation tools, an integrated development environment, documentation and examples. Regulus has been used to build command grammars for Clarissa and several other major projects, including a medical speech translator and a speech enabled home control system.

User Interface for JPL multi-mission accountability service
Design, write a specification document, and implement, a graphical user interface for JPL's multimission accountability service. That user interface makes it easy for accountability analysts and other users to track the status of a requested data product through its entire life--from the sequencing of the commands necessary to gather the data, through the uplink of those commands to the spacecraft, the execution of those commands, the downlinking of the data, and the subsequent processing of the data to produce the eventual data product.