patterns are defined in simple, declara- CERA can be used to monitor complex In accordance with Public Law 96;517, tive statements that combine point systems and to signal operators or initiate the contractor has elected to retain title to this events from given input streams with corrective actions when anomalous condi- invention. Inquiries concerning rights for its those from other streams, using con- tions are recognized. CERA can be run as commercial use should be addressed to: junction, disjunction, and negation. a stand-alone monitoring system, or it can I/NET Patterns can be built on one another re- be integrated into a larger system to auto- P. O. Box 3338 cursively to describe very rich, tempo- matically trigger responses to changing Kalamazoo, MI 49003 rally extended combinations of events. environments or problematic situations. Phone No.: (269) 978-6816 Thereafter, a run-time matching algo- This program was written by William A. Fax No.: (800) 673-7352 rithm in CERA efficiently matches Fitzgerald and R. James Firby of I/NET, Inc. for Refer to MSC-23637-1, volume and num- these patterns against input data and Johnson Space Center. Further information is ber of this NASA Tech Briefs issue, and the signals when patterns are recognized. contained in a TSP (see page 1). page number.

TurboTech Technical Evaluation Automated System Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland TurboTech software is a Web-based can then be further edited to conform TurboTech is applicable to composing process that simplifies and semiauto- to specific cases. technical evaluations of contractor pro- mates technical evaluation of NASA By providing technical language and a posals, task and delivery orders, change proposals for Contracting Officer’s structured format, TurboTech allows the order modifications, requests for pro- Technical Representatives (COTRs). At COTRs to concentrate more on the ac- posals, new work modifications, task as- the time of this reporting, there have tual evaluation, and less on deciding signments, as well as any changes to ex- been no set standards or systems for what language would be most appropri- isting contracts. training new COTRs in technical evalu- ate. Since the actual word choice is one This work was done by Dorothy J. Tiffany ations. This new process provides boil- of the more time-consuming parts of a of Goddard Space Flight Center. Further infor- erplate text in response to “interview- COTRs’ job, this process should allow mation is contained in a TSP (see page 1). style” questions. This text is collected for an increase in quantity of proposals GSC-15554-1 into a Microsoft Word document that evaluated.

Robot Vision Library NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California

The JPL Robot Vision Library (JPLV) programming interface). The software verse as legged vehicle navigation and provides real-time robot vision algo- is designed for real-time execution large-scale urban modeling. rithms for developers who are not vi- (10–20 Hz) on COTS (commercial, off- This work was done by Andrew B. sion specialists. The package includes the-shelf) workstations and embedded Howard, Adnan I. Ansar, and Todd E. algorithms for stereo ranging, visual processors. Litwin of Caltech and Steven B. Goldberg of odometry and unsurveyed camera cali- This package incorporates algorithms Indelible Systems for NASA’s Jet Propulsion bration, and has unique support for developed over more than ten years of Laboratory. very wide-angle lenses (as used on the research in ground and planetary robot- This software is available for commercial Mars Exploration Rover HazCams). ics for NASA, DARPA (Defense Ad- licensing. Please contact Karina Edmonds of JPLV gathers these algorithms into one vanced Research Projects Agency) and the California Institute of Technology at uniform, documented, and tested pack- the Army Research Labs, and is cur- (626) 395-2322. Refer to NPO-46532. age with a consistent C API (application rently being used in applications as di-

Perl Modules for Constructing Iterators Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland

The Iterator Perl Module provides a ented design pattern where a descrip- and provide iterators for some other general-purpose framework for con- tion of a series of values is used in a con- types of values. structing iterator objects within Perl, structor. Subsequent queries can request Iterator::DateTime constructs iterators and a standard API for interacting with values in that series. These Perl modules from DateTime objects or Date::Parse de- those objects. Iterators are an object-ori- build on the standard Iterator framework scriptions and ICal/RFC 2445 style re-

NASA Tech Briefs, September 2009 47 currence descriptions. It supports a vari- ting back an iterator where the specific is a very common data structure used ety of input parameters, including a iteration desired is opaque to the caller. throughout Perl programming. The Iter- start to the sequence, an end to the se- It is of particular value to the ator::Hash module allows a hash to in- quence, an Ical/RFC 2445 recurrence Iterator::Hash module which provides clude strings defining iterators (parsed describing the frequency of the values nested iterations. and dispatched with Iterator::String) that in the series, and a format description Iterator::Hash constructs iterators are used to construct an overall series of that can refine the presentation manner from Perl hashes that can include multi- hash values. of the DateTime. ple iterators. The constructed iterators This work was done by Curt Tilmes of God- Iterator::String constructs iterators will return all the permutations of the it- dard Space Flight Center. For further informa- from string representations. This mod- erations of the hash by nested iteration tion, contact the Goddard Innovative Part- ule is useful in contexts where the API of embedded iterators. A hash simply in- nerships Office at (301) 286-5810. consists of supplying a string and get- cludes a set of keys mapped to values. It GSC-15560-1/1-1/2-1

Tropical Cyclone Information System NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California The JPL Tropical Cyclone Informa tion System (TCIS) is a Web portal (http://tropicalcyclone.jpl.nasa.gov) that provides researchers with an exten- sive set of observed hurricane parameters together with large-scale and convection- resolving model outputs. It provides a comprehensive set of high-resolution satellite (see figure), airborne, and in-situ observations in both image and data for- mats. Large-scale datasets depict the sur- rounding environmental parameters such as SST (Sea Surface Temperature) and aerosol loading. Model outputs and analysis tools are provided to evaluate Images of Supertyphoon Pongsona that struck the U.S. island of Guam on December 8, 2002. The com- model performance and compare obser- posite image on left was made by overlaying data from the infrared, microwave, and visible/near in- frared sensors. A standard image is on the right. vations from different platforms. The system pertains to the thermody- clones observed globally during 2005. This work was done by P. Peggy Li, Brian namic and microphysical structure of the There is a plan to extend the database W. Knosp, Quoc A. Vu, Yi Chao, and Svetla storm, the air-sea interaction processes, both forward in time till present as well M. Hristova-Veleva of Caltech for NASA’s Jet and the larger-scale environment as de- as backward to 1998. The portal is pow- Propulsion Laboratory. picted by ocean heat content and the ered by a MySQL database and an This software is available for commercial li- aerosol loading of the environment. Apache/Tomcat Web server on a Linux censing. Please contact Karina Edmonds of Currently, the TCIS is populated with system. The interactive graphic user in- the California Institute of Technology at satellite observations of all tropical cy- terface is provided by Google Map. (626) 395-2322. Refer to NPO-45748.

XML Translator for Interface Descriptions NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California

A computer program defines an XML makes it hard to find and fix errors. By process, which ensures that whenever schema for specifying the interface to a using a common schema, both sides are an interface is changed, all of the code generic FPGA from the perspective of forced to use the same structure by using that uses the header files describing it is software that will interact with the device. the same framework and toolset. This recompiled. This XML interface description is then makes for easy identification of prob- This work was done by Elizabeth R. Boro- translated into header files for C, Verilog, lems, which leads to the ability to formu- son of Caltech for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab- and VHDL. User interface definition late a solution. oratory. input is checked via both the provided The toolset contains constants that This software is available for commercial li- XML schema and the translator module allow a programmer to use each regis- censing. Please contact Karina Edmonds of to ensure consistency and accuracy. ter, and to access each field in the regis- the California Institute of Technology at Currently, programming used on both ter. Once programming is complete, the (626) 395-2322. Refer to NPO-46447. sides of an interface is inconsistent. This translator is run as part of the make

48 NASA Tech Briefs, September 2009