Abstract
Due to its large territory, Brazil relies on space systems to perform a myriad of supporting activities. Space systems design requires strong modeling and simulations techniques for achieving high performance. This article describes the development of a goal-driven user interface (UI) for spacecraft distributed simulations using a service oriented paradigm and supporting different space missions. From usability problems with traditional simulators UIs, described by satellite subsystem design engineers, this work proposes three dimensional visualization, natural interaction techniques, virtual and augmented reality as well as interaction with touch-screen and gesture recognitions. This research uses an open source C/C++ toolkit, designed to provide interactivity, networking and scripting capabilities for simulator developers, this facilitates in providing specific input or output driver engines. Finally, some further developments are described for future work.
Highlights
The space exploration generally drives research and applications to areas such as rocket propulsion, life support, new materials, reliable computer algorithms, autonomous operations, etc
In Brazil, space missions are mainly performed by the National Institute for Space Research (INPE) and they play a key role for the vast Brazilian territory in water, fishery, agricultural and deforestation monitoring as well as weather/climate data gathering from ground sensing data platforms or obtained from images taken by artificial satellites [1]
The Simulator Kernel (Model and Simulation Control) and Graphical User Interface (GUI) decoupling, can use the same communication provided by Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) [19]
Summary
The space exploration generally drives research and applications to areas such as rocket propulsion, life support, new materials, reliable computer algorithms, autonomous operations, etc. These interests must be understood before any development. Developers are mainly interested in model representations and user interactivity, managers want to validate operational scenarios, presenters and museums might want to exhibit the space mission to public and spacecraft subsystemsengineers are interested in incorporating their hardware into a simulation loop [3], interconnect different operation models system budgets, check assembly and configurations. Computer Graphics (CG) and Computer Vision (CV) may provide alternative views and interactivity with simulation objects and the environment, allowing the development of several tools, training and, operations Some of these alternative interfaces can be created using Virtual Reality (VR) or Augmented Reality (AR) techniques [8]. This allows interaction and variation of effects, based on visually goal-driven definitions instead of traditional programming scripts and/or windows point and click menus
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