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From 1995 to 2003 I worked at NASA Ames Research Center in the Neuro Engineering Lab. The NEL did basic research into adaptive software technologies such as neural nets and fuzzy logic. The project I worked on was Intelligent Flight Control, an application of these techniques to the realworld problem of realtime, adaptive high performance control systems for aircraft. My job was creating the visual flight simulators, integrating aerodynamic code and other features into the sims, giving demonstrations of the research results, and general management of lab resources.

My job consisted almost entirely of realtime graphics. As a result, when I started to compile material to tell this story, I discovered that I have only a smattering of my graphics from those days. Here I present a few videos of our work at the NEL, including an excerpt from the FY2000 budget briefing which NASA Administrator Dan Goldin gave to the US Congress in February, 1999. Mr. Goldin used the graphics from the NEL Mars airplane flight simulator as a major highlight of his briefing. It was quite fortunate that a copy of the videotape from NASA HQ still existed, which I used as the source for these two clips. The short clip shows only the splash screen, footage of my flight simulator, and Mr. Goldin's comments as the briefing resumed following the video montage created by the HQ video team of the best work done at NASA during 1998. The long clip gives Mr. Goldin's introduction to the video montage, the entire montage created by HQ, and comments following the montage. Fox 2000 produced a TV feature about the NEL work, one of dozens of television crews and other media who produced reports on the NEL. Fox 2000 was the only which gave us advanced warning about air time of the feature so we could record it as it broadcast. Also included here is an early example the flight simulator, and a collection of still images which I made from various simulator versions.

Intelligent Flight Control was awarded the NASA Group Achievement Award in 1998, and was a finalist for the Discover 100 best new technologies of the year, 1999.



© 2006 Ken Lindsay

samba4ken@yahoo.com