Titulo Estágio
Dynamic Simulation Visualization
Área Tecnológica
Interação com o Utilizador
Local do Estágio
Rua Alfredo Cunha nr. 37 sala 35 4450-023 Matosinhos, Portugal
Enquadramento
Visionspace Technologies is a company in space industry. We provide services to European Space Agency (ESA) Ground Segment Infrastructure regarding verification and validation of critical software.
Since the beginning, VisionSpace was involved in the design and quality assurance phase of the Simulation Ground Infrastructure from the European Space Agency (ESA). It is important to notice that besides well defined model-based development cycles and frameworks of Operational Spacecraft Simulators (OSS), there is always some Mission specific requirements that only fits specifically to that Spacecraft under development.
At the same time as the Spacecraft is build, an OSS is developed, which uses the On-Board Software (OBSW), which goal is to provide training to the Flight Control Teams (FCT). During the training phase of the FCT, the Spacecraft Engineers become familiarized with the Spacecraft and their specific routines ones the Spacecraft is launched.
The visualization of the status and monitoring of a complex system as a Spacecraft requires the analysis of the critical components and implementing additional functionalities to monitor and changing their status.
This master's thesis appears in the scope of the development of a visualization tool that allows to monitor the Ground Segment and the Spacecraft components. This study will take shape of the integration of the current ESA Ground Operations System interacting with the OSS.
Operating a Spacecraft is a critical task for all member of the FCT and it is required an intensive training, where during these trainings an OSS is used and failures were intensively injected to perform recovery procedures.
Since the Spacecraft is a complex and critical system it is hard to display all its components and implements all its failure modes. Currently the only way to monitor the Spacecraft is through Alpha-Numeric and Graphical Displays, where only values are shown. This tool will go further, not just showing the current values of the Spacecraft, but also displaying intuitively its components and the user immediately grasp the meaning of the health-status just by looking coloring schemes of the components.
Beside identifying visually the failures, it is important to understand the effects of such failure and how to handle them. The analysis of such failure-effect events fundamental for troubleshooting and executing recovery procedures by the FCT. Therefore an extension is proposed to the tool to manage the failure modes and effects analysis (FMEA).
Understanding all the Spacecraft Sub-Sytems is not the goal of his study, but implementing the visualization tool and creating an overview and understanding the main visual-components of the Ground Segment and Spacecraft is the main concert of this study.
Objetivo
This master work is divided into two main components, a strong theoretical component and a more practical component.
The goals for this master thesis are the following:
- Analyse and study the current visualization of critical systems and their best practices;
- Analyse the current implemented components and extract possible issues beneficial for the FCT;
- Develop a tool that is able to visualize and monitor complex components;
- Develop of drivers interacting with back-end components.
Plano de Trabalhos - Semestre 1
- Milestone1 (Month 1 to Month 2)
The first milestone period will be mainly used to do theoretical research about learning visualizing techniques from critical systems and the understanding the interaction with such system. VisionSpace will provide a learning course of the current practices used of the development of Spacecraft simulators and an overview of the Ground Segment standards used in the Aerospace segment. Also during this period, a revision of the basic bibliography must be made and at the end of this process an article must be written based on the knowledge acquired.
- Milestone2 (Month 3 to Month 6)
In this second phase deep study and experimentation of the state of the visualization tool and the FMEA extension must be performed and therefore an analysis of its functioning, architecture, pros and cons and the inside explanation of such tools and methods applied to our domain problem.
In this milestone the student must start to think the best techniques to develop a prototype for the final solution.
At the end of this period it’s expected the full understanding the best practices and the architecture model of the prototype to be implemented.
Plano de Trabalhos - Semestre 2
- Milestone3 (Month 7 to Month 8)
This period will be exclusively devoted to the development of the proposed prototype tool. In this phase Visionspace will provide full access to a test virtualization environment containing the Simulation Infrastructure. It will be expected the tool to be finished at the end of this period.
The last month will be devoted to integrate the tool in a OSS.
- Milestone4 (Month 9 to Month 11)
This last milestone will be the shortest one, this will be mainly devoted to evaluate and validate the tool results, guaranteeing that everything proposed has been done correctly and efficiently. Bugs will be fixed and the results of the tests will be revised, and intermediate conclusions will be drawn from the outcome results.
At the end, all conclusions about the work done will be written and the thesis document will be reviewed. Will be desirable that at this stage the student has a scientific paper in an international conference of the aerospace area.
Condições
People are the foundation of Visionspace success. As an employee-owned company, we care about not only the technologies we develop but also the path we take to create them. Visionspace operates under a highly collaborative organizational model that recognizes and encourages leadership throughout the company and takes care of the individual.
Visionspace' technical staff members play a pivotal role in developing advanced software technology. Engineers work in small team settings and must successfully interact with clients, partners, and other employees in a highly cooperative and intellectually challenging environment.
We’re looking for people who can invent, learn, think, and inspire. We reward creativity and thrive on collaboration.
We offer you a great internship experience with a fast growing company and the opportunity to join our staff.
Our philosophy, simply stated, is recruit once, hire twice.
This is a unpaid internship, Visionspace will pay:
- Food allowance;
- Travel allowance.
Observações
- Recommended Bibliography
-- “EGOS User Desktop - Interface Control Document”, European Space Agency
-- “SIMSAT, Software User Manual”, European Space Agency
Orientador
Miguel Lordelo
miguel.lordelo@visionspace.com 📩