One summer at NASAs John C. Stennis Space Center

The test stands at SSC are enormous structures, each with several hundred - even thousands - of sensors. With such a high sensor count and variety it is incredibly difficult to do anything useful with the influx of data in real time beyond recording it for future examination. However, it would be ideal if the test controller could not only view all of the data in an intuitive and information rich environment but also have the complementary sensor data fused together to provide more robust information. Enter the integrated intelligent health management system (IIHMS). The IIHMS is a collection of smart sensors, each aware of the local process they are measuring, controlled by an expert system with a global view of the entire system. The long-range goal is to develop an expert system to provide the test controller with a fully immersed environment in which to monitor the condition of every system component and receive advice on anomalies and proper courses of action. The IIHMS is now termed intelligent system health management (ISHM). Dave was assigned the hardware design of a smart temperature sensor that would form the foundation layer of the IIHMS; Don was responsible for the firmware that would add the intelligence to Daveʹs hardware by enabling it to monitor the health (i.e., quality) of the sensor and the quality of measurements in real time; Jon was left the task of designing the link between the smart sensor and the expert system. This work discusses the summer experience of the authors at SSC.