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Participants

Felix Heimes 
Lockheed Martin Control Systems 
heims@cs.lmco.com 

Kalmanje S. Krishnakumar 
University of Alabama 
kkumar@coe.eng.ua.edu 

Bowen Loftin 
University of Houston 
M/S CSC 3475 
Houston, TX 77204-3475 
713-743-1238 
FAX: 713-743-1249 
bowen@wh.edu 

Andrew Meade 
Rice University 
Mail Stop 321 
6100 Main Street 
Houston, TX 77005-1892 
713-527-8101x3590 
meade@rice.edu 
http://www.rice.edu/~mems 

Domenic Quaglierella 
EIRA/Italian Aerospace Research Center 
+33-823-623139 
FAX: +33-823-623335 
d.quagliarella@cira.it 

Antony Satyadas 
Flexible Intelligence Group 
1401 Rime Village 
Hoover, AL 35216 
205-985-7344 (Home) 
205-977-1524 (Work) 
http:\\www.flextool.com\antony 

Paul Zetocha 
U.S. Air Force Phillips Laboratory 
PL/VTS 
Kirtland AFB, NM 87117 
505-846-8986x139 
FAX: 505-846-6053 
zetocha@plk.af.mil 

Summary

The committee discussed the objective and the activities of the technical committee.  Chairman Krishnakumar suggested the following. The objective should be to advance the development and applications of state-of-the-art AI and IS technologies in the aerospace community. Our activities should include technical conferences, student contests, IS awards, an outstanding paper award, an Aerospace America article, working groups, technical short courses and tutorials, white papers, and liaisons. 

The committee discussed membership.  The committee has about 18 active members.  Sixteen of these are within the United States.  Two are foreign.  The committee needs more members.  Each current member is asked to find another member. 

The committee discussed ISTC tenants.  Chairman Krishnakumar suggested the following tenants: impact, ownership and involvement, distributed leadership, diverse membership, communication, mentoring, liaisons, and having fun. 

The committee discussed the structure of the committee.  This structure has the following positions: chairman, vice chairman, secretary, steering committee, membership committee, liaison 
committee, awards committee, conferences, standards committee, publications committee, student activities committee. Chairman Krishnakumar suggested a structure and asked for volunteers to fill various slots. 

Chairman Krishnakumar said that he had removed several inactive members from the committee.  He said that he would be calling other inactive members to ask them if they wished to continue with the committee. 

The committee discussed a name change.  Chairman Krishnakumar suggested that our name be changes from Artificial Intelligence technical Committee to Intelligent Systems Technical Committee. The committee wish to broaden the scope of the committee to be inclusive 
of technologies other than artificial intelligence. The suggested scope is as follows. 

TC will address the application of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Intelligent Systems (IS) technologies and methods to aeronautic and astronautic systems, the verification and validation of those systems, the education of the AIAA membership in the use of AI and IS technologies in other disciplines.  The systems of interest include both military and commercial, aerospace and ground systems.  AI and IS technologies of interest include expert systems, planners, model and constraint based reasoners for de The committee discussed virtual conferences.  This would be a way to run a conference with a low budget and with minimal effort.  A virtual conference would also allow participants o more efficiently allocate their time between the conference and their other activities. 

The committee toured the Virtual Environment technology laboratory.  The committee was show the "Cave," a set of projection screens which surround a viewer with a 3-D immersive environment. The committee was also shown modeling software and motion seats.  The committee would like to thank Mr. Loftin and his associates for this tour and are grateful for their time. 

Action Items

• Chairman Krisnakumar will contact inactive members and ask them if they would like to continue with the ISTC. 
• Paul Zetocha will investigate coordinating our activities with WCCI. 
• K. Whittier will look into coordinating our activities with the AIAA Reno conference. 
• Chairman  Krishnakumar will investigate activities with the GNC. 
• Each active member is asked to please find another member! The committee must double the size of its active membership to become an effective technical committee. 

Volunteers

• Chad Cox accepted the position of secretary. 
• Paul Zetocha volunteered to oversee conference activities. 
• Antony Satyadas volunteered for the steering committee and volunteered to be liaison to the IEEE Standards Committee. 
• Andrew Meade volunteered to oversee student activities.  He also volunteered to be the liaison to the Aerodynamics technical Committee and to be the liaison to the ANNIE Conference. 
• Felix Heimes volunteered for the membership committee. 
• Domenic Quaglierella volunteered to oversee foreign membership. 

Participants

Summary

First on the agenda was a review of the previous meeting. The committee then discussed the two main topics of the previous meeting, the structuring of the technical committee and a name and scope change.  Bowen  Loftin made a motion that the name of the committee be changes to the "Intelligent Systems Technical Committee."  Paul Zetocha seconded the motion.  A vote was taken and all members present were in agreement that the name be changed.  (Felix Heims had not yet arrived.  Later, he was asked his opinion and he agreed with the name change.) 

The committee then reviewed the scope.  See the minutes of the last meeting for the wording suggested by Chairman Krishnakumar.  Robert Savely suggested removing all references to AI. Chad Cox suggested the phrase "IS technologies include" be augmented by the words "but are not limited to. "  Robert Savely suggested that intelligent agents be added to the list. 

Chairman Krishnakumar described a virtual meeting and a virtual conference.  He suggested that we support such meetings in the future.  Bowen Loftin suggested a software product called "Seminar."  Chairman Krishnakumar brought up the possibility of charging fees.  Also discussed was approval and/or funding from AIAA.  The Chairman asked Robert Savely if there might be NASA funds available for such an effort.  Mr. Savely was noncommittal.  Robert Savely said that there are commercial solutions available for virtual conferencing.  He said that we should contact Hewlett Packard.  Robert Savely suggested that we call our virtual conference a virtual workshop to avoid scaring AIAA.  Chairman Krishnakumar thinks that it will be difficult for us to have our own conference.  Maybe we could piggyback on ICNN.  If we get enough papers, maybe they would give us our own proceedings.  If IEEE is not willing to publish our proceedings, the maybe AIAA will publish the proceedings of the workshop. 

We were given a tour of building 9.  This is where the Space Station mockup is kept.  We were then shown training software developed by Robert Savely's group.  We would like to thank Mr. Savely and his associates for the tour and the demonstration. 

A presentation was made by David L. Germaine of LINCOM.  He discussed distributed data systems, the Pattern Interpretation and Recognition Toolkit, and intelligent computer aided training. 

Chairman Krishnakumar brought up the subject of an article for Aerospace America.  Robert Savely volunteered to assemble this article.  All members are asked to send him news worthy items. Chairman Krishnakumar gave Chad Cox and Robert Savely copy of the call for articles. 

Paul Zetocha described his work at Phillips laboratory.  He talked about the satellite autonomy projects which he manages.  In particular, he talked about satellite anomaly resolution. 

Felix Heims described computational intelligence applications at Lockheed Martin Control Systems. 

We discussed the next meeting place.  Most members feel that IJCNN in Alaska, May 1998, would be a good place and time to meet.  Robert Savely thinks that it will be difficult for the Government members to justify travel to Alaska.  (The paper deadline for IJCNN is sometime in September of 1997.) 

Action Items 

• All members should send news worthy items to Robert Savely.  These will be assembled into an Aerospace America article describing the state of intelligent systems applications to aerospace systems. 
• Chairman Krishnakumar must contact Fred Highland. 
• A URL must be sent as contact information for the Aerospace America article. 
• We must recruit new members.  Each member is asked to bring in at least one new member. 
• Chairman Krishnakumar will ask members if IJCNN Alaska is an acceptable meeting place. 

 

Please contact wwmfarm@fred.net for comments or questions.