The initial effort is underway to introduce varied plant growth performance based on varied input levels of critical currencies, starting with carbon dioxide (CO2). Grant Hawkins of the SIMOC development team is simultaneously preparing a paper for the International Conference on Environmental Systems (ICES 2022) as he develops a deeper understanding of these known functions, as assembled through a literature review.
We are proud to announce that the University of Arizona Biosphere 2 and SAM will host the second annual Analog Astronaut Conference, May 5-8, 2022. The theme is “Learning from Space to Improve Earth and Humanity” with an emphasis on How analog missions allow us to learn from Space to Improve Earth and Humanity.
Visit the Analog Astronaut Conference website and see you soon!
Today the ASU Computer Science Capstone team conducted a live demo of a sensor generating data and delivering it into the SIMOC front-end dashboard. This marks an exciting point in development as we move to provide SAM with a rich, dynamic sensor array for real-time monitoring of the breathable air, capture of the data for local observation, and display to the world via the National Geographic hosted SIMOC interface.
Notes:
– interpolated every second
– 24 seconds load and cache
– demonstrated an increase to 14,000 ppm with Greg’s breathing on the sensor
– It works! and looks great!
The SIMOC development team lead by core Python developer Ezio Melotti and Grant Hawkins, and Meridith, Greg, Ryan, David, and Ian of the Arizona State University Computer Science Capstone team have made significant strides in SIMOC development this past six months.
June-July
A major re-write of the Advanced Configuration Editor (ACE) now matches the current agent descriptions and capabilities, enabling local-install users to modify and download the configuration file, which can then be used on local installations to run custom simulations.
Other updates include:
* Jun 21, FE/INFRA: added linting check to the front-end
* Jun 23, BE/INFRA: added a basic testing framework
* Jul 1-9, BE: removed the ACE
* Jul 13, BE/SAM: added SAM agents
* Jul 26, FE: new confirmation popup
* Jul 28, FE: improved plant validation
* Jul 29, FE/INFRA: update docker image and dependencies
August-September
A User feedback survey is now included, made available from the Main menu and prompted when
exiting a simulation for the first time. This enables the SIMOC development team and sponsor National Geographic to receive feedback from users during run-time engagement.
The new 3D view now matches the user-defined habitat configuration, visible on both the Configuration and Dashboard screens.
Other updates include:
* Aug 4, FE: new modal popups
* Aug 9, FE: added the survey
* Sep 8, BE: added documentation with Sphinx
* Sep 11, FE: update to VueJS 3, bumped FE version to 1.0.0
* Sep 13, FE: added the 3D view
* Sep 22, BE/INFRA: removed DockerHub dependency
* Sep 23, BE/INFRA: removed staging branch, misc infra updates
* Sep 27, FE: improved the 3D view, fixed bugs, added rocket
* Sep 28, FE: added the simoc-web.py script
* Sep 29, BE/ABM: added a CO2 tank and makeup valve agents
October-November
The holy grail of software development, SIMOC now incorporates Pytest for unit and integration testing for the SIMOC configuration files, model and agents. Finally!
Other updates include:
* Oct 5, BE/ABM: refactored connections and added the agent_conn.json file
* Oct 10, FE/INFRA: disabled artifact creation on GitHub
* Oct 12, BE/ABM: all agents are now storages too
* Oct 18, BE/INFRA: added custom SSL certs for NGS
* Oct 20, BE/ABM: atmo storages included in cq/gh, added atmo_equalizer agent
* Oct 26, BE/INFRA: added a separate DB for testing and more BE tests
* Oct 27, BE/ABM: added the currency_desc.json file
* Oct 29, BE/INFRA: added an adminer container for DB inspection
* Nov 2, BE/ABM: created the data_files dir and moved the JSON files there
* Nov 2, BE/ABM: currency classes, sold_fertilizer replaced sold_n/p/k, more tests
* Nov 13, BE/ABM: food/ration prioritization
Early in the development of SIMOC we recognized the need to differentiate various kinds of food. While it it is the ultimate goal to track energy from fats, sugars, and proteins, we are immediately concerned with distinguishing food from rations, meaning, the food grown in-hab from the food brought from Earth. This sounds simple enough, yet it invokes a function not yet implemented in SIMOC—the ability to prioritize one currency over another in the presence of both.
SIMOC team member Grant Hawkins took on this challenge and this week complete made major strides with the effort, which invoked a moderate redesign of the means by which agents (e.g. Humans) consume their respective currencies (e.g. food, rations, water, etc.). As such, local food is the first priority for consumption, but if depleted, the humans return to consumption of rations.
Initiated in early October, the Arizona State University undergraduate Computer Science Capstone team, in concert with Ezio, Grant, and Kai of the SIMOC development team have completed a second-draft work-flow for the sensor array to be embedded in the Space Analog for the Moon and Mars (SAM) at Biosphere 2.
This design will continue to evolve as SAM is constructed and the SIMOC team dives into real-world sensor tests in place of the current SIMOC simulated data. Stay tuned!
Thomas Lagarde, Ingénieur système pour habitats dans les environnements extrèmes (System engineer for extreme environment habitats) has developed a Grasshopper code base that imports the results of a SIMOC simulation, then generates a 3D Mars base that corresponds to the parameters configured by the SIMOC user.
As presented at IAC 2021, Thomas developed this unique project to demonstrate the possibility of using existing solutions and concepts developed and used for earth applications as a design architecture for outer-space habitats. The future habitats/cities will need to evolve constantly, fixing a form, a system or a program is not the solution to adapt to an environment that we will learn a lot from when we get there. The design for a habitat and its systems will require constant modifications to adapt to changes in the environment, our knowledge of it and/or our reaction to it. Interior and exterior organizations will certainly change rapidly depending on new requirements. To produce an optimal design at a fast pace and correctly we need to use computational techniques such as parametric design or topology optimization. The new design solution should be the best according to a chosen set of conditions. For example: well-being, comfort, ease of operation and construction. With the help of software such as Rhino/Grasshopper and SIMOC we can demonstrate the practicality and the necessity of this approach for future human settlements in any extreme environment.
The SIMOC development team has added the long-awaited 3D view of the habitat, available to the user both while configuring the habitat and on the SIMOC simulation dashboard. Users enjoy a dynamic visual representation of the habitat provided by space architecture designer Bryan Versteeg of SpaceHabs, such that as they select varied sizes of the habitat components, the image updates.
We are pleased to welcome David Wingar, Gregory Ross, Ian Castellanos, Meredith Greythorne, and Ryan Meneses to the SIMOC team for the next nine months. They will be working with SIMOC developers Ezio Melotti and Grant Hawkins to build a new back-end to the SIMOC web interface, providing a live data feed from the array of sensors in SAM, the hi-fidelity Mars habitat analog being constructed at the Biosphere 2.
The SIMOC team has presented two papers at the International Conference on Environmental Systems (ICES), July 12-14, 2021.
Visit the Publications page at SAM to learn more …