HIGH PERFORMANCE VIEW-GENERATED DATABASE FOR WORLD MODEL DEFINITION AND UPDATE

AUTONOMOUS AND SEMI-AUTONOMOUS ROBOTIC SYSTEMS WILL PLAY A MAJOR ROLE IN FUTURE SPACE ACTIVITIES. TO MAKE THIS POSSIBLE, THESE SYSTEMS MUST INCORPORATE EXTENSIVE, GEOMETRIC KNOWLEDGE OF THEIR ENVIRONMENT - KNOWLEDGE OFTEN REFERRED TO AS WORLD MODEL. BECAUSE MUCH OF THE SPACE STATION WILL BE DEFINED IN TERMS OF CAD/CAM DATA, A WORLD MODEL MUST BE COMPATIBLE WITH CAD/CAM FORMATS AND AT THE SAME TIME ABLE TO ASSIMILATE UPDATES FROM SENSORY DATA. NO CURRENTLY PROPOSED COMPUTER DATABASE, SUITABLE FOR WORLD MODEL, HAS THE CAPABILITY OF PERFORMING THIS TASK IN A REALISTIC TIME FRAME. TO ADDRESS THESE ISSUES, KMSF WILL DEVELOP A HIGH PERFORMANCE VIEW-GENERATED DATABASE THAT WILL DIRECTLY ASSIMILATE MULTIPLE RANGE AND CAMERA IMAGES, TAKEN AT DIFFERENT VIEWS, INTO A WORLD MODEL. THIS SYSTEM WILL BE BASED ON A NOVEL DATA STRUCTURE, THE POLYTREE, ORIGINALLY USED IN THE COMPUTER GRAPHICS AREA, AND CONCEIVABLY, WILL BE SUPPORTED ON A MASSIVELY PARALLEL PROCESSING SYSTEM ARCHITECTURE, SUCH AS THE N-CUBE, BBN BUTTERFLY, OR AIS-5000.