Highlights from the Manufacturing
Engineering Laboratory, February 2004

Programmatic/Technical Accomplishments

NIST Hosts Robot Performance Testing by Search and Rescue Experts in USAR Arenas

Public interest in robots for USAR applications continues to grow as evidenced by the Discovery Science Channel's multi-day filming of the search and rescue exercise that took place January 21 - 23, 2004. The event is scheduled to air as part of their Techknowledge series.

Researchers from MEL hosted search and rescue professionals, and their robots, from the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory (INEEL), Swarthmore College, and American Standard Robotics for three days of robot performance testing within NIST's Reference Test Arenas for Urban Search and Rescue (USAR) Robots. MEL's researchers administered missions that required the robots to traverse the same arenas used in competitions around the world, but with the added difficulty of complete darkness, and at times heavy smoke spewing from fog machines. The operators were remotely located in another room within the building and had no direct view of the arenas or their robot's predicament as they attempted to find and identify simulated victims. Two of the three robot teams used certain autonomous capabilities to help navigate the unknown environment and ease operator workload. The operators were experienced search and rescue personnel from the local region, not robot developers. This provides a better perspective of how robots would be used in a real search and rescue situation by subject matter experts. These tests conducted in NIST's resident arenas are considered to be much more challenging than the open competitions hosted at conferences due to the hardened conditions, limited operator knowledge of the arena set-up, and extraordinary hindrances such as smoke filled hallways and additional rooms that are simply not possible to replicate in conference settings.

Human factors researchers from NIST, University of Massachusetts (Lowell), and Mitre Corporation conducted operator workload assessments during robot missions, and captured operator interface screens and robot performance video for later analysis. This data collection exercise is analogous to efforts initiated at recent competitions and is developing a growing body of archived performance data to support research objectives in human-machine interfaces.

Contact: Adam Jacoff (301 975 4235), Brian Weiss (301 975 4373),or Elena Messina (301 975 3510)

Interactions

World Wide Web Consortium Approves Semantic Web Standards

On Feb 10, 2004, the World Wide Web Consortium announced final approval of two key Semantic Web technologies, the revised Resource Description Framework (RDF) and the Web Ontology Language (OWL). RDF and OWL are Semantic Web standards that provide a framework for asset management, enterprise integration and the sharing and reuse of data on the Web. These standard formats for data sharing span application, enterprise, and community boundaries - all of these different types of "users" can share the same information, even if they do not share the same software. This announcement marks the emergence of the Semantic Web as a broad-based, commercial-grade platform for data on the Web. The deployment of these standards in commercial products and services signals the transition of Semantic Web technology from what was largely a research and advanced development project over the last five years, to more practical technology deployed in mass market tools that enables more flexible access to structured data on the Web. MEL's Evan Wallace has been actively participating in this effort for over two years. See http://www.w3.org/2004/01/sws-pressrelease.

Contact: Evan Wallace ext.3520

MEL Leads Workshop on New CAD Standard

Allison Bernard Feeney of MEL held a workshop at the February 2004 ISO TC 184/SC4 meeting to finalize specifications for a new Technical Specification release of the STEP (Standards for the Exchange of Product Model data) computer aided design (CAD) data exchange standard (10303-203 Edition 2). The workshop brought together key experts from industry and government to develop technical solutions to the critical issues submitted to the SC4 secretariat during the prior four months. The workshop drew representatives from five countries including United States, Germany, Japan, UK, and Norway. US industry representation included participants from Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, and PDES, Inc. Highlights of the workshop included presentations on key industry implementation requirements for CAD geometry, geometric dimensioning & tolerancing, materials, and CAD model validation. Other dicussions included work in the area of product data management, digital mock-up, presentation rules, and support for multi-linguism. A major portion of the workshop was devoted to harmonization with other ISO standards and the re-use of common components between standards. Results of the workshop will be published by the ISO/SC4 Secretary at www.tc184-sc4.org.

Contact: Allison Barnard Feeney, 301 975 3181

Recognition

McLean Joins SISO Executive Committee

MEL researcher Charles McLean was recently voted in as a member of the Executive Committee of the Simulation Interoperability Standards Organization in recognition of his expertise. The Simulation Interoperability Standards Organization (SISO) focuses on facilitating simulation interoperability and component reuse across the Department of Defense, other government, and non-government applications. SISO hosts two Simulation Interoperability Workshops per year and is responsible for the development of a number of simulation-related standards.

Contact: Chuck McLean, 301 975 3511

NIST Paper Receives SPIE Metrology Best Paper of 2003 Award

The paper, "Simulation Study of Repeatability and Bias in the CD-SEM," by MEL researchers John Villarrubia, András Vladár, and Michael Postek was selected by vote of conference officials as the best of the 129 papers presented at the 2003 SPIE Conference on Metrology, Inspection, and Process Control. The paper described the relationship between microscopy resolution, precision, and measurement biases for scanning electron microscope measurements of semiconductor feature widths. The paper called into question assumptions implicit in the International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors concerning the relationship between measurement resolution and repeatability. A derived relationship between these quantities showed dependence upon additional terms, terms that simulations predicted would be significant in practice. Later experimental results by an independent industry researcher were in quantitative agreement with the prediction. Simulations quantified the dependence of measurement resolution upon image noise, edge detection algorithms, instrument resolution, and other measurement variables. The award is given in honor of Diana Nyyssonen, who was active in SPIE and spent part of her career at NIST and IBM.

Contact: John Villarrubia, 301 975 3958