Post on 19-Jan-2016
REVEAL Instrument Overview
What is REVEAL?• Prototype strap-down (vehicle-independent) instrumentation system• REVEAL provides the traditional (manned) airborne laboratory support
items– data acquisition and distribution, state parameters, recording, and networking
infrastructure, • but with far less size, weight and power than previous systems
– Self-contained with internal sensors (inertial reference system, GPS, instrument-grade accelerometer and clinometer), heater, GPS splitter, UPS, and power/temp/pressure/humidity monitoring,
– Also has external interfaces for analog, serial, video, and avionics buses. – REVEAL on Altair leverages Iridium satellite connectivity so that geographically
distributed researchers can maintain situational awareness of vehicle and instrument states in near realtime.
• Built on open standards; dynamically reconfigurable; designed for broad class of sensor web and airborne instrument communication R&D applications.
REVEAL Instrument Overview
Why is REVEAL?• A vehicle-independent interface for UAV-based science instruments
is valuable– Cost reduction
• Eliminate needless repetition of data & comm interface engineering– Risk mitigation
• Reduce need for integrated instrument and vehicle C3I data link– Weight, volume, power constraints
• We need to evolve better capabilities and greater capacity to do useful work on UAVs– REVEAL helps evolve network-centric approaches to payload
integration, command, control, monitoring, etc.
REVEAL Instrument Overview
The future of exploration & observationIs a network-centric, layered, complex system-of-systems.
start building the suborbital layer!
Why?
REVEAL Instrument Overview
REVEAL Instrument Overview
Nominal Use Case ScenarioVehicleSystems
Experiment 1
Experiment 2
Experiment 3
Research Group 1
Research Group 3Research Group 2
Aircraft
WirelessNetwork(e.g. Iridium)
(Future)
REVEAL Instrument Overview
Tele-control
Tele-observation
Network Computing
Prototype an end-to-end capability
OTH ConnectivityInstrument InteractionOn-board computing resourceWeb Access
NASA
NASA
Use Case Scenario (detail)
REVEAL Instrument Overview