Information
What is Marseva?
Mars EVA is a project to produce software supporting the simulations being done by the Mars Society of Australia (www.marssociety.org.au) investigating manned exploration of Mars. The project aims to produce software running in the three experimental hardware items being conceived by MSA:
space suit
rover
hab
The software will enable real time data streaming and communication between these three units in order for the marsonauts in the space suits, the pilots in the rover, and staff back at the hab to collaboratively explore Mars.
MarsEVA computing environment refers to the software running in hab, rover & suit. It is based on JINI Services, and JMF media streaming.
High Level Requirements
The requirements are a bit dry, so to give you a feel for what the system will do let's go straight to the high level use cases:
Story 1: Mission-1, EVA-1
Jon – Geologist
Steve – Psychologist
Robert – Physicist
Jen – Geologist
The team plan a mission to go from the hab out to Nili Patera in Syrtis Major. They call the mission MIS-1. The team transfer to the rover via airlocks and start up. They tell the rover they are MIS-1. This transfers all the planning materials.
They then drive to their destination. The rover guides their travel using the planned route. Jon,Rob, Jen don suits and power up. The suit discovers the rover & determines it is part of MIS-1. The suit asks the wearer to confirm they are MIS-1. (could be a visitor from another rover) & confirm their identity.
Steve remains inside the rover, while the rest of the group go outside. From power up, all data available ( vital signs, temperature, suit pressure, oxygen, video, GPS etc are captured and stored & streamed back to the rover.
Upon confirmation of MIS-1 an immediate voice communications network is set up (using multicast SIP/RTP). This allows for communications between the group of people in MIS-1. The comms network includes the rover operator steve. For this EVA, they have chosen to take UtilBot-1 A general purpose tool carrier.
The rover operator goes to the computer console and logs in. MIS-1 standard view is shown. This is a map of the area(loaded from mission data) with each suit indicated as an icon with the wearer name on the outside. The voice network is played through speakers. UtilBot 1 also appears on the monitor with a different icon type as it detaches from outside the rover. It’s default behaviour is to tag along with the group. Jon & Jen put geological instruments in UtilBot 1
They walk for a while, talking on the voice comm.. The mission is to explore the valley they are in. So they split up. Jon discovers an interesting feature. Jon says to suit “SUIT: EVENT Geological formation 21, OK”. The suit responds “New Event”. This flashes on Steve’s screen by blinking Jon’s icon. The event name ‘Geological formation 21’ appears on steve’s screen. Steve clicks on the icon and a view of the event comes up in a separate window. This is video from Jon.
The event is sent as notification to mars hab who are logging missions. Mina, an operator mthere sees the event and clicks on it. At present she sees only the name of the event. If she clicks, she will see what mission/eva, and be able to see who is there etc. She can choose to get vid feed/audio feed if bandwith allows.
All data on Jon’s suit is now associated with the event. The rover is recording all data against the vent. Jen and Rob are also notified of Jon’s event via the PDA. The notification may come over the voice network as well. Jon calls over Jen. She clicks on Jons event in her display and her data is also associated with Jon’s event. Her attendance to the event is noted at rover & hab. At rover her vid is also displayed.
Jon looks at the format and directs suit “SUIT, PICTURE Big Rock, OK”. This picture is named and noted to all parties monitoring. Jen then directs “SUIT, NOTES to PICTURE Big Rock. This rock is blah blah blah, OK”.
Jon shows Jen, and they begin talking on voice comm. Net. Rober says “Can you go separate?” They apologise. Jen says “SUIT, EVENT COMM, OK”. All personnel associated with the current event for Jen have a little voice net set up for them. The mission comms net, and eva comms net are now options in the PDA. By clicking on one they can rejoin either conversation. They can also opt to keep listening to mission comms, but only transmit to the eva comms. All comms are associated with the event and streamed/logged.
Jon calls over Util Bot 1 by saying “SUIT, COMMS WITH UTILBOT-1 CALLTYPE COMMAND”. He gets a third comms session on the PDA. He then says “UTILBOT1, MOVE TO ME”.
The bot comes over. The bot & data is automatically added to the event and this is notified.
Jon takes out the instruments and plugs it into his suit. They take data readings and these are logged into the Event.
They have now finished the event. Jon says “SUIT, EVENT COMPLETE”, and all are removed from the event and keep logging against the mission. The comms network is also closed.
They all return to the rover. When they enter the rover, EVA-1 is completed automatically.
Story 2: Mission 1, EVA-1 Review
Once they have settled down and reovered from the walk, they review the EVA. Jon logs in to the console, and sees a mission timeline displayed. He then sees eva-1 and event 1. He double clicks on the event and can review all data logged. He can put this data into any other tool in the system for analysis (eg spreadsheets). He can also further annotate the event or eva. He can also associate reports and any data analysis results with the eva. This is so that any conclusions drawn can be auto linked back to this EVA. The results are also viewable by any mission monitors.
Story 3: Mission 1, Planning
Jon wants to go out to ili Patera in Syrtis Major. He brings up the locations database, and selects the appropriate maps. The destination is known in GPS co-ordinates. The distance is then calculated to the destination and any geographical input helps the program estimate fuel/resources required for the trip. Jon adds other personnel (Jen, Steve & Robert) to the roster for the mission. He brings up the mission timeline, and, with the program estimating travel time, identifies which times/days he will be where in the mission and plans out approximate EVA's. When the mission is saved, and approved, it is lodged with the mission register as an active mission, scheduled to go.
High Level Design
So, how will the system work?
Suit
Firstly, the Suit unit will probably look something like this:
The software running in it has the following major abstractions:
The Suit System has a PDA for it's primary interface. The PDA talks to the Suit System. The Suit System has:
PDA UI Manager. This looks after the User interface for the suit (ie manages the PDA )
Suit Data Capture. The SUIT Data Capture component of the suit system has the responsibility of capturing data from:
microphone
video
sensors
GPS
'plugged in' portable devices
Data Stream Manager. The DataStreamManager is responsible for:
encoding capture data and streaming to other interested parties
decoding incoming data and outputing to relevant local output devices.
Suit Identity: Every SuitSystem has an identity. This needs to be stored and communicated when necessary
Peer network Manager: The PeerNetworkManager is responsible for communicating over the network with other resources on the network
Mission System Manager: The mission system Manager is responsible for:
determining the mission/EVAs available in the local network
confirming with the argonaut the mission/EVA to use
handling communications with other argonauts and utilbots
handling events/media notation.
Communication Faciliator: The communications facilitator manages communication between the various parties:
argonaut suits
rover operator
remote mission monitors
Rover
A Conceptual model of the rover system is shown below:
The rover has the following entities:
RoverNavigator: Rover Navigation communicates with the rover GPS and tracks progress. This will also allow for autopilot type features. It also produces position reports for logging and other components.
Mission Monitoring: Mission Monitoring is the software used to track the mission as it progresses through the plan.
Communications Facilitator: The communications facilitator manages communication between the various parties:
- argonaut suits
- rover operator
- remote mission monitors
Local Mission Store: A mission Store holds all details of the mission. It is the local mission environment. That is, stored on the rover.
Others
The Hab software is composed of the mission event monitoing, and the global mission store. I don't have a diagram for it yet. I'm most interested in getting the suit & rover to talk.
How do I get started
First of all, you need to be registered with sourceforge . Ensure you have a developer login. Then, send me an email with your login name, and I'll add you as a developer to the project. You'll notice there is a series of sub projects on the main screen. Talk to me & I'll let you know which one is best for you to work on. You next have to set up CVS access. There are a lot of instructions on how to do this in the sourceforge website. Once you have your developer keys, let me know & I'll add them to those allowed to write to CVS.
The other part of getting started is to ensure you know the technologies. You need to know:
Java
JSP
JMF
JINI
Look these up on the java website. You can probably pick them up as we go along, but at least java, then jini. Use Jan Newmarch's tutorial on Jini. JMF is not widely used I don't think, but it gives us the ability to encode our own data in a bigger framework, which is what we need. Finally, JSP is used for the User interfaces. This is so we have flexibility in terms of the final rendering client (PDA, touchscreen, green screen equiv?)
That's it! Good Luck, and hope to hear from you soon.
Mark Smith
October, 2004
Download Docs
- Project Overview Powerpoint
- System Design
- Requirements
- I have just uploaded the source code & a model written using argouml (see Version 0.0.1)