Dr. Henry McDonald, NASA Ames Center Director, presented the following individuals a Space Act Award totaling $20,000 for the Virtual Environment Vehicle Interface (VEVI):

Philip Hontalas, NASA Ames
Butler Hine, Fourth Planet (previously NASA Ames)
Laurent Piguet, Fourth Planet (previously Recom Technologies)
Terrence Fong, Carnegie Mellon (previously Recom Technologies Inc.)
Erik Nyguen, MIT (previously Recom Technologies Inc.)

The Virtual Environment Vehicle Inter-face (VEVI) is a highly versatile software tool used to develop advanced operator interfaces for the visualization and control of remotely located robotic vehicles such as planetary rovers or spacecraft.

VEVI is significant in that it allows a single operator to quickly understand the state of a complex system and take action based on that understanding. As an example, VEVI's use in planetary rover missions increases the operation science efficiency of the rover by an order of magnitude. For an Earth-orbiting spacecraft, such as Ranger, VEVI allows the number of ground controllers during the mission to be decreased by a factor of five.

The VEVI software system represents a concrete application of two decades of basic research in virtual reality, which NASA pioneered. The system is so effective that the architectural philosophy behind the system is being adopted by JPL, JSC, Stanford University, Carnegie Mellon University, University of Maryland, and McDonnell-Douglas for internal projects.

Experience to date shows that the use of VEVI can decrease the ground personnel required for a mission by 50-80%. For typical flight missions, that represents several hundred million dollars per mission.

It is a high honor to be granted the Space Act Award because it is a statement of the significant value placed by NASA technologists after their peer review of new and useful inventions carried to commercial success. Space Act Awards may be granted up to $100,000 in accordance with the provisions of the NASA Space Act of 1958 (for civil servant and contractors employees) and up to $10,000 in accordance with the Government Employees Incentive Act of 1954 (for civil servants only).

For more information and images of VEVI applications please visit the web site:

http://maasneotek.arc.nasa.gov/~piguet/VEVI
(Click on description.)

Story provided by:

Phil Herlth, NASA Ames
Commercial Technology Office
e-mail: pherlth@mail.arc.nasa.gov

NASA/ARC web site:

http://ctoserver.arc.nasa.gov/