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Posts Tagged ‘nasa’

Open Source and Defense

12/30/2005 – 11:13 am
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Phlak linux logo, http://phlak.org/Recently I recieved an email from Jay Lyman of NewsForge.net who wanted my input on an article he is working on:

I heard you talk a little about your work developing software at NASA when I got a tour of the OSU Open Source Lab earlier this year. As I recall, you mentioned that some of your work had the potential to end up in weapons systems, and a discussion of the matter then followed. I’m working on an article now on the appropriateness of open source for weapons, military and national defense and would like to include your input.

This is a very creative and timely topic given our current political climate and I was happy to help by answering the questions that followed.

Do you believe that military, weapons or defense applications are contrary to the ideals of the open source software community? Please explain.

Freedom is the number one ideal of open source and I believe it would be contrary to these ideals to restrict what the software is being used for. The FOSS community is providing a general purpose foundation for a computing system that requires a great amount of customization for a military application and because of the dedication to the ideals of freedom I think it is a valid however possibly unfortunate use of the software.

As a developer, are you concerned about the use of your creations and development for military/defense purposes?

The project I worked on this summer while in the NASA Goddard Robotics Internship Program was general purpose hand recognition software that had as much application on a Mars rover and physical rehabilitation as it does on a military platform.

This is the only software that I have ever developed that has any military applications.

Although I am concerned that the software could be used in a weapon I am hopeful that more productive application may be found. And by using a FOSS license a developer may be inspired by this software and create an entirely new application.

Do you believe open source is appropriate for these types of applications and national defense?

Ensuring that FOSS is protected by licenses that offer liberal and wide freedom to everyone is key. It would be dangerous to start trying to put any restrictions on how FOSS is used as many good things can come out partnership with governments such as the NSAs SELinux.

Furthermore creating additional barriers of use may confuse consumers and scare off vendors from distributing FOSS.

For example would using Linux on desktops in the Senate be considered defense use? Senate does handle defense funding and decide on military actions.

From your perspective, how significant is open source software in this area?

The group that I worked used Linux for prototypes. However this is primarily R&D and proof of concept work. Deployed military applications more than likely are then converted to a specialized CPU like an FPGA.

I think FOSS is used for rapidly prototyping and feeling out a concept but deployed hardware is futher ruggedized and made more compact and manufacturable by special hardware.

Anything else you would like to add?

Freedom is a central value of the community and I think restricting that freedom to protect from unwanted users, such as the military, would be subverting this value.

The next day after emailing my response I started reading The Debian System and read the following passage:

The additional ability to use Debian for whatever purpose a user thinks fit is equally important. Debian does not allow any discrimination of persons, groups, or fields of endeavour. Debian may be put to use by anyone for anything, even in morally debateable domains, such as genetic research and warfare. Debian does not attempt to define what is acceptable and what is not because it would put a limit on the freedom of its users

So it seems that the community has already given some thought to this topic; however I am still anxious to see what Jay has found from the research of his article.

Note: Tux logo borrowed from Phlak linux, a modular live security Linux distribution, see http://phlak.org

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Mission Success

8/31/2005 – 3:51 pm
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I’m Back

I'm Back!

Although serious injuries almost resulted from the obvious ending to this situation it was alot of fun at the time.

NASA

The last 5 weeks at NASA were fantastic; everyone came together and finished not only their team projects but also the group project.

In those last weeks I finished up the hand tracking software although I never got the chance to integrate it in to Archie, there just wasn’t enough time. But I did manage to make a neat demo of the software in action:

Click to play video of hand tracking software

In amongst finishing up Archie I was elected the President of the NASA Robotics Internship Program Alumni Association. My first order of business as President is organizing the “reunion trip” to Vegas to see the DARPA Grand Challenge. When we visited CMU Red Wittacker assured us that the Red Team Racing team was going to win the challenge this year; we will see first hand.

In the future I will be working with the Treasurer Daniel Calvo to establish the Alumni association as a incorporated non-profit guaranteeing not only our positions as dictators for life but also giving us an opportunity to figure out how to do it. The only difference between a non-profit and for profit organization is one isn’t allowed to make money; pretty obvious huh?

New Town Pennsylvania
After graduation Kim and I took Amtrak up to New Jersey to eventually meet Kim’s Uncle, Aunt and Cousins at their home in New Town PN.

I couldn’t think of a better way to end my crazy 10 weeks on the east coast then sitting out by the pool and talking to Freddie and the family. If any of them are reading; thanks for the conversation and hospitality.

Reading
Since my last post I finished Robot Visions a collection of Asimov’s short stories; this book was a great collection and the introduction had some interesting insight from Asimov about the Three Laws of Robotics; the most famous words he ever wrote.

Given my next few weeks off I have started to tackle the first volume of The Art of Computer Programming which promises to be a good warm for school. On Intelligence; which was recommended to me by Freddie and it is a book that offers one of the first theories on how the brain creates what we call intelligence.

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!DEAD

7/3/2005 – 12:45 pm
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The rumors of my death are greatly exaggerated. I have been too busy doing things to have time to write about them. So what have I been up to?

Human Robotics Interfaces
URBIE
My robotics internship team has been assigned the task by Anthrotronix to create a platform for testing new robotic input devices. To get a jump start we were given a shell from a prototype of the iRobot PackBot. Over the last few weeks we have been researching and purchasing parts for the robot including: a PC104 Mainboard (it is fricken sweet), microcontrollers, power systems, cameras, ultrasonics and a whole range of other cool components to get this thing up and running.

There is a lot of work to be done but seeing the thing actually move around under its own power on Friday has really got me excited.

Image Processing
I have been spending most of my time writing image processing software with the goal of reducing images down to smaller and smaller pieces of data. A picture may be worth a thousand words, but the goal of image processing is to find one or two really useful ones. My primary task is to take video of a person making large hand and arm movements and figure out what movements they are making. For a human being this is an easy task, especially when the gestures are made over several seconds and may be made over one or two feet. But for a computer this task is a difficult one.

This is an excerpt from our upcoming midterm poster presentation:

Controlling Urbie using broad arm and hand gestures is our primary goal. Our approach uses a standard webcam and PC to do processing of the video to detect the motion of skin colored objects in a scene and then match those with a gesture template on a 3×3 grid. The algorithm takes the following steps:

1. Mask the image to match only skin tones

2. Use a timed motion history image (tMHI) to track motion in the scene [Davis, 95]

3. Input x,y over entire motion into stroke matching algorithm [libstroke]

The final output will be a string containg the numbers of the boxes that the motion passed through in order.
diagram of stroke

Sight Seeing
Being right next to the nations capitol and one of the largest research sites for NASA leads to plenty of opportunities to see some great things. Photos taken by myself and the other 27 interns can be found over at grip.ifup.org/photos. My favorites include the Discovery Channel chopper, the open air spider exhibit at the national zoo and the robots at the Johnson Space Center.

Reading
Between the metro rides, forty minute commutes to work and time spent in airports and shuttles I have had alot of time to read. Before we visit the Computer Science and AI Labs at MIT next month I thought it would be good to read up on Rodney A. Brooks, the lab director. So I borrowed a compilation of his papers on subsumption architecture called Cambrian Intelligence The Early History of the New AI. It is a very good read.

On the fiction side of things I just started “A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius” and also purchased two books from Orson Scott Cards “Ender’s Game” series: “Ender’s Shadow” and “Speaker for the Dead.”

Tomorrow
At 2am I will be sitting in a big auditorium at the University of Maryland watching some of the first footage from Deep Impact and about 18 hours after that watching the largest fire works display in the country in Washington DC. It is going to be great!

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