Release Notes

This file is a compilation of OceanWATERS release features, in reverse chronological order.

• Upcoming Release
• Release 12
• Release 11
• Older Releases

Upcoming Release

The following features are planned for Release 13, sometime in 2024. They are currently available on the noetic-devel branches of the OceanWATERS repositories. While the noetic-devel branch should be usable, it is not assuredly stable since it has not been as rigorously tested as the Release 12 based master branch.

• TBD

Release 12 (current release)

**This release requires you to update your PLEXIL installations. Instructions are found here.

Simulator (ow_simulator)

General

• Improvements and refinements to many ROS action scripts.
  • For pose commanding arm actions, the relative flag now interprets the pose as additive within the selected frame.
• Improved arm trajectory planning.
  • Refactored arm trajectory planner.
  • Improved trajectory and goal error reporting.
  • Improved depth accuracy of dig commands.
• Improved digging fidelity.
  • New Balovnev-based digging model.
  • Increase in regolith collection.
• Various topic publication rates were corrected to be more consistent.
• Several improvements and fixes in graphics.
  • Fixed dynamic terrain coordinate system mistakes, leading to terrain holes with incorrect poses.
• Expanded coverage of automated tests to nearly all lander commands.

Fault Injection and Modeling

• New power system faults
  • Battery node disconnection, which disconnects some nodes of the battery pack and distributes power load across remainder.
  • Artificial power faults, which force the predictions into states that trigger their associated fault flags. Unrealistic behavior, but important for testing.
    • Low state-of-charge
    • Instantaneous capacity loss
    • Thermal failure
• Updated custom fault profile formatting for simplicity.

Power System Model

• Single-cell battery model upgraded to a multi-cell model.
  • Maximum power draw significantly increased; power consumption is distributed across four 6S1P models.
  • Battery lifetime is now much higher.
  • Runtime configuration of many new aspects of the power system.
• Significant improvements to mechanical power application.
• Option to control the performance load of the power system, from increasing the number of simulated nodes to disabling the power system altogether.

Autonomy (ow_autonomy)

• ow_plexil package upgraded to use PLEXIL v6 (PLEXIL 4.6 will no longer work).
• Complete PLEXIL interface to JPL's OWLAT Simulator (actions, telemetry), with new and refactored test plans.
• Greatly refactored and reorganized PLEXIL adapter and plan directories.
• Fault dependencies framework and demonstration plan.
• System health monitor and demonstration plan.
• New PLEXIL commands for stochastically injecting and clearing faults.
• Many PLEXIL plan improvements.
• A new script ow-compile-plan  for compiling a single PLEXIL plan.
  • Much faster than catkin build and allows plan editing while running ow-plexil launches.

Miscellaneous

• Numerous bug fixes and small enhancements throughout system.

Release 11

Release date: March 2023

The central theme of Release 11 was a lander operational interface (commands, telemetry) that is more unified with JPL's Ocean World Lander Autonomy Testbed (OWLAT), a physical testbed that compliments OceanWATERS. Release 11 implemented mainly the OceanWATERS side of the interface.

**This release required you to update your PLEXIL and GSAP installations. Instructions are found here.

Simulator

ROS Actions

• The ow_lander action servers and robotic arm interface were largely refactored:
  • Most classes and methods were reworked as modules and moved into a Python package named ow_lander. Thus they can now be imported and used in other ROS packages.
• A framework for creating new ROS Actions that interface with the lander has been developed.
• The Python scripts that invoke each ROS action were renamed and modified for the updated actions.  They also now have detailed help messages.
• ROS Action error handling and logging were rewritten and made more consistent across commands.

Commands

• Existing commands have been unified with OWLAT's interface:
  • Unstow is replaced with ArmUnstow
  • Stow is replaced with ArmStow
  • Stop is replaced with ArmStop
  • Deliver is replaced with TaskDeliverSample
  • Discard is replaced with TaskDiscardSample
  • DigCircular is replaced with TaskScoopCircular
  • DigLinear is replaced with TaskScoopLinear
  • AntennaPanTiltAction is replaced with PanTiltMoveJoints
• New commands have been added:
  • ArmMoveCartesian - Moves the end-effector to the commanded pose.
  • ArmMoveCartesianGuarded - Moves the end-effector to the commanded pose and stops when resistance is encountered.
  • ArmMoveJointsGuarded - Sets position of all arm joints and stops when resistance is encountered.
  • ArmFindSurface - Pokes the surface with the end-effector.
  • CameraCapture - Captures images with both mast cameras.
  • CameraSetExposure - Sets the mast camera exposure level.
  • LightSetIntensity - Sets the intensity of either mast spotlights.
  • PanTiltMoveCartesian - Pans and tilts the lander mast to point the stereo-cameras at a point in space.
  • Pan - Changes only the pan position of the lander mast.
  • Tilt - Changes only the tilt position of the lander mast.
• There are still OceanWATERS-only commands, and some have been renamed:
  • DockIngestSampleAction is now DockIngestSample
  • Grind is now TaskGrind

Telemetry

• Existing telemetry has been unified with OWLAT's:
  • /faults/system_faults_status is replaced with /system_faults_status
  • /faults/arm_faults_status is replaced with /arm_faults_status
  • /faults/cam_faults_status is replaced with /camera_faults_status
  • /faults/power_faults_status is replaced with /power_faults_status
  • /faults/pt_faults_status is replaced with /pan_tilt_faults_status
  • /ft_sensor_dist_pitch is replaced with /arm_end_effector_force_torque
  • /joint_states is supplemented with /arm_joint_positions, /arm_joint_velocities, /arm_joint_torques, and /pan_tilt_position
  • /power_system_node/battery_temperature is replaced with /battery_temperature
  • /power_system_node/state_of_charge is replaced with /battery_state_of_charge
  • /power_system_node/remaining_useful_life is replaced with /battery_remaining_useful_life
  • /StereoCamera/points2 is supplemented with /camera_point_cloud
• New telemetry added:
  • /arm_tool - This topic exists to support OWLAT. When using OceanWATERS, the value will always be 4, which denotes the scoop end-effector.
  • /arm_joint_accelerations - Angular accelerations of each arm joint.
  • /arm_pose - Cartesian position of end-effector in the base_link frame.

Fault Injection and Modeling

• Improved camera fault detection.
• Refactored fault publishing code.

Physical Lander Model

• Improved pan/tilt operation: angle limits are enforced, angles are better compared and normalized.

Power System Model

• A long-standing bug in which battery remaining useful life went to 0 within seconds of high power draw has been fixed by a newer version of GSAP (prognostics engine).

Automated Testing

• Refactored ROS Action call methods for rostest python scripts into a module.
• Created a Python script that statistically computes ROS Action Result expected values.

Autonomy (ow_autonomy)

• PLEXIL now commands the lander entirely through its ROS action interface; interfaces were developed or modified for all new and changed ROS actions.

Miscellaneous

• Numerous bug fixes and small enhancements throughout system.

Older Releases

Older releases are are not described here, since this page was started with Release 12.