A B S T ~ C T A running system, named SAIL, for the development of Natural Language Grammars is described. Stress Is put on the particular grammar rule model adopted, named Complex Grammar Units, and on the parsing algorithm that runs rules written In according to this model. Moreover, the parser is like a processor and sees grammar rules as processes which cart be activated or Inactivated, and...

Future solar sail missions, such as NASA’s Solar Polar Imager Vision, will require sails with dimensions on the order of 50-500 m. We are examining a square sail design with moving mass (trim control mass, TCM) and quadrant rotation primary actuators plus pulsed plasma thrusters (PPTs) at the mast tips for backup attitude control. Quadrant rotation is achieved via roll stabilizer bars (RSB) at ...

An environmentally sustainable fast sail assisted feeder (FSAF) container ship concept with a maximum operational speed of 25 knots has been developed for the 2020 South East (S.E.) Asian and Caribbean feeder container markets. The use of low-carbon and zero-sulphur fuel (liquefied natural gas) and improvements in operational efficiency (cargo handling and scheduling) mean predicted green house...

In order to identify new ways to prevent, diagnose and treat diseases, biobanks systematically collect samples of human tissues and population-wide data on health and lifestyle. Efficient access to population biobank data and to biomaterial is crucial for development and marketing of new pharmaceutical products, especially in the area of personalised medicine. However, such access is hindered b...

Marine textiles form a vital part of our cultural heritage. Some extant sails and surviving sail fragments in museum collections are hundreds of years old. The Victory sail, from the early 19th century, was not only subject to the ravages of the marine environment during its working life but has since suffered further deterioration during storage and display. To determine the optimum protocol f...

Coverage is a task, where a robot is to move about a given a target area until every point in it is visited. Many efficient coverage algorithms cannot be used in practice, because they assume accurate movements by the robot; unfortunately, real robots have navigational errors. A standard costly solution is to utilize a robot that continuously localizes, so as to make course corrections. In this...

The NASA In-Space Propulsion (ISP) program has been sponsoring system design development and hardware demonstration activities of solar sail technology over the past 27 months. Validation of a 10-m system solar sail system is complete, and efforts to demonstrate and evaluate a 20-m system are underway. Descriptions of the evolution of the design, results of functional testing to date, and analy...

The KnightSat II is the University of Central Florida’s entry in the sixth iteration of the University Nanosatellite Program. The principle objective of the satellite is to deploy a gossamer sail, which will dramatically increase the aerodynamic drag acting on the satellite and reduce the time it will take to deorbit. A prototype sail and deployment system has been successfully built and tested...