Implementation of Sensor and Control Designs for Bioregenerative Systems

The goal of the Spring 1990 EGM 4001 Design class was to design, fabricate, and test sensors and control systems for a closed loop life support system (CLLSS). The designs investigated were to contribute to the development of NASA's Controlled Ecological Life Support System (CELSS) at Kennedy Space Center (KSC). Designs included a seed moisture content sensor, a porous medium wetness sensor, a plant health sensor, and a neural network control system. The seed group focused on the design and implementation of a sensor that could detect the moisture content of a seed batch. The porous medium wetness group concentrated on the development of a sensor to monitor the amount of nutrient solution within a porous plate incorporating either infrared reflectance or thermal conductance properties. The plant health group examined the possibility of remotely monitoring the health of the plants within the Biomass Production Chamber (BPC) using infrared reflectance properties. Finally, the neural network group concentrated on the ability to use parallel processing in order to control a robot arm and analyze the data from the health sensor to detect regions of a plant.