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Satellite Loaded With AI For Self-Diagnosis
TheReckoning writes "NASA has loaded its E0-1 Satellite with Artificial Intelligence to diagnose on-board failures. The software 'works by comparing a computerized model of how the spacecraft's systems and software should perform against actual performance. If the spacecraft's behavior differs from the model, then the ... "reasoner" looks for the root cause of this difference and gives flight controllers several suggestions of what might have gone wrong.' Another NASA probe loaded with AI was Deep Space 1."
what happens if the AI malfunctions? then mission control will get a bunch of useless error reports... It's a stupid self diagnosis test... not AI... overhyped buzzword... It simply runs a simulation and tests its results against the actual ones, and generates a report... that's not AI... of course if it is, that would classify a lot of humans in the DMV as intelligent as well... ;)
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Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.
It sounds like a variation of an expert system, though the article isn't particularly forthcoming with the grisly details. Expert systems are considered to be a part of classical AI.
NASA has plenty of systems like this, though this is the first I have heard that is loaded onboard.
They have similar programs for the Space Shuttle main engines that run on the ground. They were going to run them in the loop on the shuttle with a new box in the payload bay, but they decided against it. The box was going to have the capability to change certain engine parameters, but they figured it was too costly.
geremy
It's a stupid self diagnosis test... not AI... overhyped buzzword... It simply runs a simulation and tests its results against the actual ones, and generates a report... that's not AI...
It's an expert system, which is indeed AI. You're probably thinking of "strong AI", which is AI that can function as powerfully and flexibly as a human [and if that definition is vague, it's because nobody's nailed down something more solid that everyone agrees on].
Expert system AIs have been around for a long time in a wide variety of fields. They are designed to handle a narrow range of tasks (like fault diagnosis, medical diagnosis, or playing chess) better or more quickly than a human could.
Title says
Paragraph 6 says :
Conclusion: It's not self-fixing. It beams an analysis down to mission control, the crew can then take measures based on this analysis.
Broken Hearts are for Assholes. - Frank Zappa
I wish the whole world would stop misusing the term. Just because AI researchers have failed for decades to make any significant progress towards true aritficial intelligence does not give them or the rest of the world license to water the term down and redefine the goals until it means virtually nothing.
11*43+456^2
The significance of this is quite substantial, despite the negative tone in the comments. This is a nuts and bolts implementation of Minsky-style strong A.I. and one of the first such systems to be put into production. Regardless of the limited domain it is more sophisticated than the mere self-diagnostic routines it is being compared to by the oh-so-knowledgable slashbot mindshare.
This system boh models the external world for consideration, just like our sense of imagination, and processes that information for purposes of survival, just like our sense of self awareness.
The great part of this is that it is being done by NASA, who are known for their lavish spending and attention to the entire system, particularly those low level details like the particulars of chip logic optimization, the shielding and structural stability, the operating environment &etc. This isn't meant to be a joke about bureaucracy and budget cuts, either: they have the top talent engineers in their stable despite all the politicking we hear about.
From the decidedly negative tone in the comments, you'd think the tech-happy slashbots were actually opposed to such efforts. I think the real deal is that you guys are raised on sci-fi instead of science, and fail to grasp just how this is important. So what if it's not HAL9000 or Skynet? It might be a baby step, but it's a hell of a lot more than any of you are doing.
Some things failed to be mentioned. For those of you fighting about whether the system is AI or not you can download the software for yourself and argue about something more than conjecture...
http://opensource.arc.nasa.gov/project.jsp?id=6
Or if the code is to much to read, and there's alot of it. You can always go to the livingstone website.
http://ic.arc.nasa.gov/projects/L2/doc/
And yet another story on the same subject.
http://ic.arc.nasa.gov/story.php?sid=193
enjoy.
-- force and mind are opposites; morality ends where a gun begins ayn rand
I agree. When I read all these articles about "AI", the description of the system doesn't even contain the essential word "learning". If all the system does is comparing two models, it is not learning. If it is not learning, it is not Intelligent. It doesn't even fall into the category of weak AI.
I worked on a project very similar to this at JPL a little over a year ago. You specify the entire system in a language. We then coverted the specification into a large conjunctive normal form (CNF) boolean statement. The CNF form was converted into something called decomposable negagation normal form (DNNF) which lets you find satisfiable interpretations in linear time with respect to the DNNF structure. You assign sensor readings and expected states to the terminals of the DNNF tree and then do SAT to find other possible values. You can also give different possible sensor values and states different weights to find the most probable (least cost) state. The compilation process takes a long time, but you only have to do it once and you have a known space and time process to upload to the vehicle.
The IBM System/360 featured a system that could pinpoint an error in the circuitry down to the resolution of a single module board (Back when the CPU consisted of about 1000 boards with 100 transistors each on them) This was in the mid-60s.
toresbe