Presentation: April 2022

This month's AE presenter: Mykel Kochenderfer, Associate Professor, Stanford
Date of presentation: 18-Apr-2022
Subject: Airplanes and Artificial Intelligence: A Gentle Introduction
Description: This month's presentation was a real treat.  Speaking to us tonight, Professor Mykel Kochenderfer gave us a "gentle introduction" to some of the concepts being developed by teams like his in the field of artificial intelligence as designed for aviation.  He talked about some of the features involved, such as evaluating possible outcomes of a situation and scoring them based on several factors, then choosing an option based on the scores received.  He talked about something called the Markov Decision Process (MDP), which is a process for evaluating possible outcomes.  He then went on to explain a bit about how these same or similar technologies could be used in other fields, such as automobile autopilots and so on.  The technologies being developed here are planned to supplant the existing TCAS II, which was first approved for operational evaluation way back in early 1987 following several mid-air incidents.

This was a fabulous talk even though it only scratched the surface of what is obviously a huge topic, but Professor Kochenderfer was very generous with his time in answering many questions posed by squadron members and other virtual attendees, both during and after his presentation.  Big thanks go out to Professor Kochenderfer for being so giving of his expertise and patience, and to 2nd Lt. Ashish Goel for arranging the whole thing.

The lecture was recorded, and there is a link available to California Wing members via SharePoint, but I do not currently have permission to post it here - if I should obtain such permission, I will update this post with a link to the presentation video.

Presentation: March 2022

This month's AE presenter: James Aubuchon
Date of presentation: 21-March-2022
Subject: Heat Pipes
Description: In this presentation from his "Space Systems" series, on the subject of heat management, Jim talked a bit about heat pipes - the structures designed to move heat energy generated by or radiated onto a system to another area where it is less likely to interfere with the proper operation of the system.  Most of these seemed to involve the circulation of some sort of cooling fluid (not necessarily water) from Point A where they pick up heat to Point B where they get rid of it.  Unlike a car radiator, however, there is virtually no air cooling in space, and vacuum is an excellent insulator, both of which make the actual heat transfer a bit more complex.

Presentation: February 2022

This month's AE presenter: James Aubuchon
Date of presentation: 7-Feb-2022
Subject: Space Systems: Heat Management (part 2)
Description: This week, Jim gave the second "half" of his Heat Management presentation.  Since he had delivered most of the material in part 1, this became largely a question/answer session.  But Jim did break part of the topic away and will talk solely about heat pipes in March.

Presentation: January 2022

This month's AE presenter: James Aubuchon
Date of presentation: 31-Jan-2022
Subject: Space Systems: Heat Management (part 1)
Description: In this month's presentation, part of the "Space Systems" series, Jim talked about heat management on a space system - how heat has a number of sources, stemming from not only electronics, but also friction from moving parts, as well as radiation from the Sun and other sources.  Since a space system cannot be expected to deal with steadily increasing heat indefinitely, pains must be taken not only to generate as little as possible, but also to route the heat energy away from sensitive areas.

Since Jim was unable to complete this presentation in the allotted time, it was continued the following week.