Overview

CASPER's plan considers the next two communications cycles - this is about 12 hours.  It executes the plan and manages helm behaviors and vehicle subsystems.  It also makes simple plan revisions to drop or insert new activities in response to anomalies such as system faults or novel observations.  CASPER can predict travel time between waypoints and has an approximate idea of the science value associated with scheduled sampling activities. 

Moos-IvP Message Interface

DEPLOY - alters the "goto waypoint" behavior

• active : is the behavior "active" or not?
• target_x : waypoint location, given in meters in local grid , computed using the MOOSGeodesy object
• target_y : waypoint location, given in meters in local grid
• tolerance_meters : loiter within this radius of the target
• dive_pitch : pitch used for diving (gliders only)
• climb_pitch : pitch used for climbing (gliders only)
• max_depth: maximum dive depth (gliders only)
• min_depth: minimum dive depth (gliders only)
• pump_cc : pump displacement (gliders only)
• velocity_mps : target speed (for AUVs? is this the right way to express it?)

SURFACE - alters the "surface" behavior, which surfaces the vehicle and activates the Iridium. Gliders only.

• active : is the behavior "active" or not?  If so, it should override the deploy behavior.
• climb_pitch : pitch used for the climb
• gps_only : true or false,
• gps_wait : how long to wait for GPS acquisition
• keystroke_wait : how long to wait for shore
• printout_cycle_time: from the .ma files, not sure what this means.    

Multimedia

Check out this March 18 demo of preliminary CASPER/MOOS integration, using default behaviors designed for AUV dynamics.

Draft Model

CASPER's basic world view consists of the (draft) model below:

Resources

• Battery: Scalar, kwh energy remaining
• Helm: Boolean, control of helm behaviors
• ... Instrument- or Subsystem resources?

State Variables

• Waypoint: Lat/lon waypoint associated with vehicle's current position
• Health: Vehicle health, could be "nominal" (normal ops), "anomaly" (recoverable), or "fatal" (activate failsafe procedures).
• Mission mode: Either "diving" or "surfacing."
• Surface conditions:  "safe" or "unsafe." Basically, are we in a shipping lane?
• ... Instrument or Subsystem states?

Activities

• Transit: Dive, and go to a specific destination waypoint.
• Communicate: Surface and activate the "phone home" sequence.  Cannot occur in shipping lanes.
• Failsafe: Surface and activate the "phone home" sequence.  Can occur anywhere on detection of an unrecoverable fault.
• Loiter at Surface? Go to the surface and stay there indefinitely

Background Activies (user can ignore, but provided here for completeness)

• Initialize vehicle