Earth and Space 2022 is pleased to offer a short course immediately prior to the Conference.

Short courses will also be available for remote (Online) participants.

A full day course is being scheduled for Monday, April 25, 2022

Download Schedule here

Health Monitoring for Terrestrial and Space Based Environments

Morning session:  Machine Learning and Applications in Monitoring of Structural Connections 

 (9:00 am until noon)

Speaker: Gangbing Song Ph.D. Professor of Mechanical Engineering, University of Houston

Morning session description:

Structural connections are commonly used in many engineering fields, such as aerospace, mechanical, energy, and civil engineering, among others. For an example, a space structure, that has many structural connections, is shown in the figure. The looseness of structural connection, if not detected promptly, may result in partial or total structural failure. Early detection of structural looseness is of great important. In recent years, Dr. Song’s group at University of Houston developed a new approach to the detection of structural connection looseness using the percussion (tapping and listening) approach, which eliminates the need to install sensors on the testing structure. An additional advantage of the percussion approach is its readiness for integration with robotics for automated large scale inspection applications. To interpret the percussion-induced rich sound information that embeds the connection looseness status, various machine learning algorithms are employed. This morning session of the short course teaches the basics about machine learning algorithms and their applications to detecting structural connection looseness. Some of the machine learning codes and data will be made available to attendees upon request. 

 9:00 am until 10:30 am

1. Introduction to Machine Learning
2. Shallow Learning Methods and Applications in Monitoring of Structural Connections

– K nearest neighbor (KNN)
– Decision tree
– Support Vector Machine (SVM)

Break 10:30 am until 10:45 am

10:45 am until 11:45 am

3. Deep Learning Methods and Application in Monitoring of Structural Connections

– Neural Network
– Recurrent Neural Network

Lunch (will be provided)

12:00 pm until 1:00 pm

Afternoon session:  Health Monitoring in spacecraft environments (1:00 pm until 5:00 pm)

Afternoon session description:

The afternoon session is focused on the health monitoring of spacecraft, experiments, human and machine interaction, and the human itself.  A series of presentations will be given to familiarize the attendee in the latest research on these topics. It is intended for engineers working in a wide range of disciplines including spacecraft design and manufacture, human factors, robotics and astronaut physical health.

1:00 pm until 2:00 pm

Speaker:  Bill Prosser Ph.D., NASA Technical Fellow, NASA Engineering Safety Center (NESC) “NASA Applications of Structural Health Monitoring Technology On-Orbit”

2:00 pm until 2:45 pm

Speaker:  Matthew Chamberlain Ph.D., Research Aerospace Engineer, NASA Langley Research Center “On Orbit Flight Testing of the Roll Out Solar Array (ROSA)”

Break 2:45 pm until 3:00 pm

3:00 pm to 4:00 pm

Speaker: Tom Williams Ph.D.  Assistant Professor of Computer Science and Director of MIRRORLab, Colorado School of Mines “Making Sense of How Users Make Sense of Robots: Applications to Human-Robot Teaming in Space Environments”

 4:00 pm to 5:00 pm

Speaker Allison Anderson Ph.D.  Assistant Professor Ann and H.J. Smead Aerospace Engineering Sciences, University of Colorado at Boulder

Note: The short course may be canceled if enrollment is insufficient.

Registration for the short course will open January 31, 2022