Workshop:Autonomous Systems in Extreme Environments

该奖项由美国国家科学基金会极地计划办公室提供，用于支持与美国国家航空航天局联合主办的关于在极端环境中构建和部署自主系统的特别会议。自主系统被定义为在几个月和几年的时间内自我维持的永久性地球物理或天体物理装置。它们以规则的时间间隔或在触发事件时获取数据，并存储该数据或将其传输到数据中心。许多研究人员在极地、海底或其他需要自主系统的极端环境中进行研究。由于这类系统的科学潜力正在迅速增长，现在是一个很好的时机，可以在研讨会期间将社区聚集在一起，讨论为极端环境开发这些系统所面临的特殊挑战，以便可以最大限度地减少过去的错误，并在过去成功的基础上实现更好的科学产出。会议地点是加利福尼亚州帕萨迪纳市喷气推进实验室的冯·卡曼礼堂，会议于1999年9月举行。研讨会的目标是促进关于自主系统设计的对话，就电力、热量、数据、通信和包装系统提出建议，并决定未来系统的标准化。研讨会还讨论了在极端环境中部署系统之前应满足的测试标准，并提出了建议。这些资金用于筹备、出版和传播研讨会的成果。

0004423DonnellanThis award, provided by the Office of Polar Programs of the National Science Foundation, provides support for a special conference, sponsored jointly with NASA, on building and deploying autonomous systems in extreme environments. Autonomous Systems are defined as permanent geophysical or astrophysical installations that are self-sustaining over periods of months and years. They acquire data on a regular time interval or upon a triggering event and either store that data or transmit it to a data center. Many investigators conduct research in polar, sea floor, or other extreme environments that require autonomous systems. Because of the burgeoning scientific potential for such systems, the present is a good time to bring the community together during a workshop in order to discuss the special challenges associated with developing these systems for extreme environments so that past mistakes can be minimized and past successes can be built upon toward better scientific output. The conference venue was the Von Karman Auditorium at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, and the conference was held in September, 1999. The goals of the workshop were to promote dialogue on autonomous system design, make recommendations on power, thermal, data, communications, and packaging systems, and to decide on standardization for future systems. The workshop also included discussion of, and recommendations for, testing criteria that should be met before systems could deployed in extreme environments. These funds are to prepare, publish, and disseminate the results of the workshop.