REVEAL Instrument Overview

What is REVEAL?• Prototype strap-down (vehicle-independent) instrumentation system• REVEAL provides the traditional (manned) airborne laboratory support

items– data acquisition and distribution, state parameters, recording, and networking

infrastructure, • but with far less size, weight and power than previous systems

– Self-contained with internal sensors (inertial reference system, GPS, instrument-grade accelerometer and clinometer), heater, GPS splitter, UPS, and power/temp/pressure/humidity monitoring,

– Also has external interfaces for analog, serial, video, and avionics buses. – REVEAL on Altair leverages Iridium satellite connectivity so that geographically

distributed researchers can maintain situational awareness of vehicle and instrument states in near realtime.

• Built on open standards; dynamically reconfigurable; designed for broad class of sensor web and airborne instrument communication R&D applications.

REVEAL Instrument Overview

Why is REVEAL?• A vehicle-independent interface for UAV-based science instruments

is valuable– Cost reduction

• Eliminate needless repetition of data & comm interface engineering– Risk mitigation

• Reduce need for integrated instrument and vehicle C3I data link– Weight, volume, power constraints

• We need to evolve better capabilities and greater capacity to do useful work on UAVs– REVEAL helps evolve network-centric approaches to payload

integration, command, control, monitoring, etc.

REVEAL Instrument Overview

The future of exploration & observationIs a network-centric, layered, complex system-of-systems.

start building the suborbital layer!

Why?

REVEAL Instrument Overview

REVEAL Instrument Overview

Nominal Use Case ScenarioVehicleSystems

Experiment 1

Experiment 2

Experiment 3

Research Group 1

Research Group 3Research Group 2

Aircraft

WirelessNetwork(e.g. Iridium)

(Future)

REVEAL Instrument Overview

Tele-control

Tele-observation

Network Computing

Prototype an end-to-end capability

OTH ConnectivityInstrument InteractionOn-board computing resourceWeb Access

NASA

NASA

Use Case Scenario (detail)

REVEAL Instrument Overview