US space agency to auction software patents
NASA invites bids for autonomic and development technologies
NASA is to auction some of its technology patents in three lots related to software code generation and autonomic computing and safety systems. The technologies have numerous potential applications in complex commercial systems.
Successful buyers will receive exclusive rights to the technologies with potential applications in complex software development, robotics, telecommunications, utilities, smart grids, wireless sensor networks, quantitative finance, enterprise software and cyber security.
Autonomic computer systems mimic biological autonomic systems, such as the human brain's autonomic control of the heartbeat.
The technologies were originally used by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in satellite control systems. They will be auctioned on 29 March at the 15th ICAP Ocean Tomo IP Auction at the Terranea Resort in Palos Verde.
The auction is part of NASA's mission to share its advanced technologies with companies that can use them to commercial ends. It also helps to boost NASA's budget in straightened economic circumstances.
The software development patent lot includes technologies designed to greatly reduce the time and effort required to create software. These technologies can automatically create formal specifications and working code from informal input.
Another feature of NASA's code-generation technology is its ability to "run in reverse" and create a description of the code, so a programmer can input source code, which will be converted into a formal mathematical model. This model is then translated into a description of the code.
The autonomic patent lot includes a number of technologies that mimic autonomic biological functions. Specifically the technology uses the concept of apoptosis (programmed cell death) as a way to help manage large, complicated computer systems by ensuring that the only active parts of an environment are the components that are actually needed. The ones that aren't are taken offline automatically.
The software uses two autonomic components similar to biological heartbeats and pulses. The heartbeats and pulses allow the autonomic system to manage, assess and react to the performance and health status of agents in the system.
The autonomic safety technologies apply this concept to manage and detect faults or failures in a monitoring system or network of sensors where a number of simple sensors may be combined to collect information regarding the status of various devices.