Kevin H. Knuth Department of Physics University at Albany Intelligent Instruments

Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information? From "The Rock" by T.S. Elliot

13 July 2007Dr. Kevin H. Knuth MAXENT 2007 More and more are our instruments required to perform science operations further from the intervention of humans. Remote Science Dust devils whip across Gusev Crater on Mars Opportunity on Mars

13 July 2007Dr. Kevin H. Knuth MAXENT 2007 Intelligent Autonomous Instruments Require:  Stability Control  Instrument Health Monitoring  Automated Calibration  Accurate Onboard Data Analysis  Adequate Data Coverage  Ability to Actively Seek Data

13 July 2007Dr. Kevin H. Knuth MAXENT 2007 Novel Instrument Design To accomplish these goals, these novel instruments must Monitor their own state (health and calibration)  Infer their state from self-sensing  Be equipped with dense sensor networks  Infer calibration parameters Learn from data  Make inferences from data  Perform hypothesis testing Ask new questions  Actively seek new data  Select optimal experiments

13 July 2007Dr. Kevin H. Knuth MAXENT 2007 Sound Familiar? Your frontal lobes carry a model of yourself that is continually updated from data received from a dense sensor network. This implements both ‘Instrument Health Monitoring’ and ‘Calibration’ You learn from new data by updating your model of the world. You actively seek new data by asking relevant questions.

13 July 2007Dr. Kevin H. Knuth MAXENT 2007 Body and Brain form a Symbiotic Unit

13 July 2007Dr. Kevin H. Knuth MAXENT 2007 Instruments and Data Analysis are Disjoint

13 July 2007Dr. Kevin H. Knuth MAXENT 2007 The Basic Components

Intelligent Instrument Test Bed

13 July 2007Dr. Kevin H. Knuth MAXENT 2007 NASA Funded Research Intelligent Symbiotic Instrument Analysis Systems

13 July 2007Dr. Kevin H. Knuth MAXENT 2007 The Dispersed Fourier Transform Spectrometer Courtesy: Dr. Arsen Hajian

13 July 2007Dr. Kevin H. Knuth MAXENT 2007 The Alignment Schematic Light (blue) enters the spectrometer through a fiber optic launcher. A laser beam (red) is injected into the system for metrology. It is filtered out of the results with optical notch filters. Cameras C1-8 collect data for the auto- alignment system. Barriers B1-6 can be introduced via auto- alignment system to test various sub-systems.

13 July 2007Dr. Kevin H. Knuth MAXENT 2007 Auto-Alignment and Stabilization We can align dFTS from anywhere in the world Alignment required 5 minutes on Code in Java (cross-platform) Modified our full-aperture metrology system to create an active compensation system Compute f(t) with respect to f(t o ) using lock-in-amp (SR830) Feed error signal back to delay line (Parker) Refine results with further Bayesian calibration

13 July 2007Dr. Kevin H. Knuth MAXENT 2007 Problems and Solutions Problem: Collaborator afraid we would steal the design of his instrument. Solution: Design and Construct our own Instrument Problem 1: Collaborator concerned about having automated software run his expensive instrument. Solution: Instrument must be inexpensive in the event of a catastrophe Problem 2: NASA management confused… “instrument already takes data in an automated fashion”. Solution 1: New management Solution 2: Instrument must be OBVIOUSLY Intelligent. Problem: NASA cuts funding to entire program Solution: Instrument must be inexpensive Solution: Secure funding from alternate sources

13 July 2007Dr. Kevin H. Knuth MAXENT 2007 The LEGO Mindstorms NXT System 1 The NXT Brick is the brain of the system. 2Touch Sensor Microphone Light Sensor Ultrasonic Rangefinder Servo Motors

13 July 2007Dr. Kevin H. Knuth MAXENT 2007 Lego teams with HiTecnic Accelerometer NEW! Color Sensor Digital Compass Prototype Board Sensor and Motor Multiplexers

13 July 2007Dr. Kevin H. Knuth MAXENT 2007 NXT Communicates with Laptop SYMBIOTIC! Hardware Software

13 July 2007Dr. Kevin H. Knuth MAXENT 2007 LDRAW (Lego Cad System)

13 July 2007Dr. Kevin H. Knuth MAXENT 2007 Rendering and Animating Designs Created by Kevin Knuth 2007 with LDraw and POVRay

13 July 2007Dr. Kevin H. Knuth MAXENT 2007 Advantages of Lego NXT 1. Cost: One NXT Robotics Kit = $ Design: Robot Bodies are not constrained 3. Construction: Robots can be built in a matter of hours 4. Documentation: LDraw software allows one to thoroughly document the robot’s construction. One can generate Parts Lists, Keep design or send to many others. 5. Brick: The Brick is programmable, but can also be set up to talk to a computer. This enables complex software to effectively run in reasonable times for Real Time adventures.

13 July 2007Dr. Kevin H. Knuth MAXENT 2007 Characterization with a Light Sensor GOAL: Characterize the circle: {x, y, r} with as few measurements as possible CONSTRAINT: Only point measurements are allowed

13 July 2007Dr. Kevin H. Knuth MAXENT 2007 Sample from the Posterior After several measurements, the posterior in {x, y, r}-space becomes well-localized. Here are possible solutions sampled from the posterior using nested sampling

13 July 2007Dr. Kevin H. Knuth MAXENT 2007 Sample from the Posterior By querying each sampled circle, we can obtain a set of hypothesized measurements for each possible measurement location. From this we create an entropy map, which tells us where we can expect to obtain the greatest amount of information.

NXT Steps

13 July 2007Dr. Kevin H. Knuth MAXENT 2007 Measure Acoustic Radiation Pattern

13 July 2007Dr. Kevin H. Knuth MAXENT 2007 Laser Scanner

13 July 2007Dr. Kevin H. Knuth MAXENT 2007 Which Experiment? In the future, he won’t need help from humans to determine the best experiment to perform. He’ll decide for himself.

13 July 2007Dr. Kevin H. Knuth MAXENT 2007 Acknowledgements: NASA SISM IS Program (Knuth) SIM Preparatory Science Program (NRA 98-OSS-07) (Hajian) Thanks Arsen HajianUSNO J. Pat CastleEA/NASA Ames Nikolay LvovQSS/NASA Ames John StutzNASA Ames Dogan TimucinNASA Ames Kevin WheelerNASA Ames Brian PohlUNC Chapel Hill J. Thomas ArmstrongNRL David MozurkewichNRL Robert B. HindsleyNRL Christopher TycnerUniv. of Toronto Robert OllingUSNO P.S. There is nothing wrong with human intervention

13 July 2007Dr. Kevin H. Knuth MAXENT 2007