OpenUxAS is developed by the Air Force Research Laboratory, Aerospace System Directorate, Power and Control Division. The LMCP specification and all source code for OpenUxAS is publicaly released under the Air Force Open Source Agreement Version 1.0. See LICENSE.md for complete details. The Air Force Open Source Agreement closely follows the NASA Open Source Agreement Verion 1.3. NOTE the terms of the license include registering use of the software by emailing [email protected].
UxAS consists of a collection of modular services that interact via a common message passing architecture. Similar in design to Robot Operating System (ROS), each service subscribes to messages in the system and responds to queries. UxAS uses the open-source library ZeroMQ to connect all services to each other. The content of each message conforms to the Light-weight Message Control Protocol (LMCP) format. Software classes providing LMCP message creation, access, and serialization/deserialization are automatically generated from simple XML description documents (see the LmcpGen project). These same XML descriptions detail the exact data fields, units, and default values for each message. Since all UxAS services communicate with LMCP formatted messages, a developer can quickly determine the input/output data for each service. In a very real sense, the message traffic in the system exposes the interaction of the services that are required to achieve autonomous behavior.
Consider a simple example: the automated construction of the flight pattern to conduct surveillance of geometric lines (e.g. perimeters, roads, coasts). A “line search task” message describes the line to be imaged and the desired camera angle. Using this input description, a line search service calculates the appropriate waypoints to achieve the proper view angle. When the UAV arrives at the first waypoint corresponding to the line search task, the line search service continuously updates the desired camera pointing location to smoothly step the camera along the intended route.
In addition to surveillance pattern automation, UxAS contains services that automate route planning, coordinate behavior among multiple vehicles, connect with external software, validate mission requests, log and diagram message traffic, and optimize task ordering. In all, UxAS has approximately 30 services.
A core functionality provided by UxAS is the mechanism to calculate near-optimal task allocation across teams of unmanned vehicles. With a collection of tasks that require servicing and a pool of vehicles available to service those tasks, UxAS is able to determine which vehicle should do which task in the proper order. This task assignment pipeline is carried out by a series of services working together in a complex sequence.
For an Ubuntu 16.04 or Mac OS X system with prerequisites installed, UxAS should build from source without issue. Support for Windows is available on Windows 7 and 10 using Visual Studio.
For Linux and Mac systems, the install prerequisities script from the OpenUxAS repository (bash install_prerequisites.sh
) automates the installation of all the necessary tools for compilation of OpenUxAS. Note, on Mac XCode must first be installed before running the install script.
Complete manual step-by-step instructions for each operating system are included below:
Expected file system layout:
./
OpenAMASE
LcmpGen
OpenUxAS
- Checkout OpenUxAS:
git clone https://github.com/afrl-rq/OpenUxAS.git
- Checkout LmcpGen:
git clone https://github.com/afrl-rq/LmcpGen.git
- Build LmcpGen:
cd LmcpGen; ant jar; cd ..
- Auto-generate source code for LMCP libraries:
cd OpenUxAS; bash RunLmcpGen.sh; cd ..
- Prepare UxAS specific patches to external libraries:
cd OpenUxAS; ./prepare; cd ..
- (optional) Checkout OpenAMASE:
git clone https://github.com/afrl-rq/OpenAMASE.git
- (optional) Build OpenAMASE:
cd OpenAMASE/OpenAMASE; ant jar; cd ../..
Note, ./prepare
needs to be done prior to the first build and any
time a file is modified in one of the /3rd/wrap_patches
subdirectories or the /3rd/*.wrap.tmpl
files.
This also needs to be done any time you move or rename your source tree.
- From the OpenUxAS local repository (i.e.
cd OpenUxAS
) - Configure for release build: in terminal
meson build --buildtype=release
- Configure for debug build: in terminal
meson build_debug --buildtype=debug
- These two steps only need to be done prior to the first build. If you modify the Meson files, just build as normal in step 3 and the changes will be automatically incorporated.
- Build UxAS: in terminal
ninja -C build all
- This step is the only step necessary in day-to-day development work. It's
the Meson equivalent of
make all
. Note that the name ofninja
may differ by distro. On Fedora, for example, it'sninja-build
. - To clean the build, add the
clean
target at the end of your ninja command:ninja -C build clean
- Run UxAS tests: in terminal
ninja -C build test
- Confirm all tests passed
- Install NetBeans and Oracle Java JDK
- Enable C/C++ plug-in in NetBeans
- Choose Tools->Plugins from the top menu
- In the
Available Plugins
tab, search forC++
- Select
C/C++
and clickInstall
- Select File->New Project
- Choose
C/C++ Project with Existing Sources
and clickNext
- Specify the
OpenUxAS
folder - Select the
Custom
option underSelect Configuration Mode
and clickNext
- No changes under
Pre-Build Action
, clickNext
- Set the
Clean Command
toninja -C build_debug clean
- Set the
Build Command
toninja -C build_debug uxas
and clickNext
- No changes under
Source Files
, clickNext
- No changes under
Code Assistance Configuration
, clickNext
- Change
Project Name
toUxAS
and clickFinish
For Linux systems, Netbeans will automatically use the gdb
debugger. On Mac OS X,
gdb
must be installed and signed (see Neil Traft's guide).
- Assuming that in the file system, OpenAMASE is at the same level as
OpenUxAS
- Add python package for UxAS plotting (src/Utilities/localcoords)
sudo -H python3 setup.py install
- Run examples
- Example 2: Follow README.md in
examples/02_Example_WaterwaySearch
- Example 3: Follow README.md in
examples/03_Example_DistributedCooperation
- Example 2: Follow README.md in
Building the Documentation on Ubuntu Linux / Bash on Ubuntu on Windows -or- Mac OS X (Partially-Automated)
The following is a bash script that helps to partially-automate the "building the documentation" processes that are documented in this README.md file below.
This has been tested-working on Ubuntu 16.04, as of 2017-05-23.
- Download the script from the OpenUxAS repository (
bash build_documentation.sh
) ORcd
to yourgit clone
d OpenUxAS directory - Run the script at the terminal:
bash build_documentation.sh
- Follow the on-screen instructions
Note that this will pop open two html files in your webbrowser and also the pdf manual when run.
If you'd like to do this process manually, then:
- The User Manual can be generated by running:
pdflatex UxAS_UserManual.tex
in the folderdoc/reference/UserManual/
- Create HTML Doxygen reference documenation:
- Open terminal in directory
doc/doxygen
sh RunDoxygen.sh
- In newly created
html
folder, open index.html
- Open terminal in directory
- Doxygen PDF reference manual can be created by:
- Copy the line from
ExtraLineToFixLatex.txt
intodoc/doxygen/latex/refman.tex
just above the line%===== C O N T E N T S =====
- In the folder
doc/doxygen/latex
run the commandpdflatex refman.tex
- The complete reference manual can be found at
doc/doxygen/latex/refman.pdf
- Copy the line from
In porting the UxAS build system to Meson/Ninja, we've taken advantage of
wrap
facility to import and build 3rd-party libraries. The advantage
of this approach is that the main UxAS repo no longer needs to contain
these libraries.
There are some rough edges. The wrap
facility (as of April 2017) was
designed to store the necessary metadata on a server operated by the
Meson/Ninja maintainers. There's a very short list of wrapped projects
available from this server. Worse, the wrap
facility is not properly
designed for project-local use: "patches" (often, only the necessary
meson.build
file) are downloaded by the wrap
facility, which offers
no provision for relative URLs.
Furthermore, the patch
file must be in an archive format. This means
that the wrapped project's meson.build
file must be tarred (actually,
the wrap
facility will handle other archive formats) for reference
from the project's wrap file, and the wrap file must contain a valid
SHA256 hash of the patch archive file.
Clearly, this will complicate maintenance. On the plus side, once an external project is properly wrapped, it shouldn't require further work unless you require a different version of the project.
We've taken the approach of stashing valid meson.build
files in the
3rd/wrap_patches
directory. This is the place to store other patched
files (if any) needed for the build of the external project. Note that
"patch" does not refer to a context or unified diff, but rather to an
archive containing new and changed files that overwrite the unzipped
sources. The wrap
facility is not able to patch using diff files.
Boost is handled slightly differently from the other external
dependencies, in that the build system attempts to use a
system-provided version of Boost before falling back on the wrap
facility as a last resort.
Boost uses a bespoke configuration and build system
that is very difficult to replicate with a Meson-based wrap
build,
and so Meson itself handles Boost differently from other
pkg-config
-provided system dependencies.
We strongly recommend using a system-provided Boost from brew
,
apt-get
, etc. If you have a system-provided boost, but during
Meson's configuration phase, you see something like the following, try
setting your BOOST_ROOT
environment variable to the prefix of your
system-installed packages (most likely /usr/local
for MacOS with
Homebrew):
Dependency Boost (filesystem, regex, system) found: NO
If you have a system-provided Boost but this message still does not go away, open an issue with details of your system configuration.
If no system-provided Boost is available, Meson will fall back to
using the wrap
we maintain alongside the other external
dependencies. This will probably work on 64-bit Linux systems, but
unexpected trouble may arise on other platforms.
If you ever feel the need to refresh external dependencies, you'll need to remove both the downloaded files and the expanded directories:
./rm-external
This script depends upon the presence of the patch tarballs installed
in the /3rd
directory by ./prepare
.
The install prerequisities script (bash install_prerequisites.sh
) will automate the following steps.
- Ensure dependency search is supported: in terminal
sudo apt-get install pkg-config
- Install
git
: in terminalsudo apt-get install git
sudo apt-get install gitk
- Install OpenGL development headers: in terminal
sudo apt-get install libglu1-mesa-dev
- Install unique ID creation library: in terminal
sudo apt-get install uuid-dev
- Install BSD development library: in terminal
sudo apt-get install libbsd-dev
- Install Boost libraries (optional but recommended; see external dependencies section): in terminal
sudo apt-get install libboost-filesystem-dev libboost-regex-dev libboost-system-dev
- Install doxygen and related packages (optional): in terminal
sudo apt-get install doxygen
sudo apt-get install graphviz
sudo apt-get install texlive
sudo apt-get install texlive-latex-extra
- Install pip3: in terminal
sudo apt install python3-pip
sudo -H pip3 install --upgrade pip
- Install ninja build system: in terminal
sudo -H pip3 install ninja
- Install meson build configuration: in terminal
sudo -H pip3 install meson==0.42.1
- Install python plotting capabilities (optional): in terminal
sudo apt install python3-tk
sudo -H pip3 install matplotlib
sudo -H pip3 install pandas
- Install NetBeans and Oracle Java JDK (optional)
- Download the Linux x64 version
- Run downloaded install script: in terminal
cd ~/Downloads; sh jdk-8u131-nb-8_w-linux-x64.sh
- Click
Next
three times, thenInstall
- Enable C/C++ plug-in in NetBeans (optional)
- Open NetBeans (in Ubuntu search, type
NetBeans
) - Choose Tools->Plugins from the top menu
- In the
Available Plugins
tab, search forC++
- Select
C/C++
and clickInstall
- Open NetBeans (in Ubuntu search, type
- Install Oracle Java run-time (required for LmcpGen): in terminal
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:webupd8team/java
sudo apt update; sudo apt install oracle-java9-installer
sudo apt install oracle-java9-set-default
- Install
ant
for command line build of java programs: in terminalsudo apt install ant
- Build
The install prerequisities script will automate the following steps.
- Install XCode
- Enable commandline tools: in terminal
xcode-select --install
- Install
homebrew
(must be administrator): in terminalsudo ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"
- Add
homebrew
to path: in terminalecho $(export PATH="/usr/local/bin:$PATH") >> ~/.bash_profile
- Install
git
: in terminalbrew install git
- Install unique ID library: in terminal
brew install ossp-uuid
- Install Boost library and configure it in a fresh shell: in terminal
brew install boost
echo 'export BOOST_ROOT=/usr/local' >> ~/.bash_profile
bash
- Install
doxygen
and related packages (optional): in terminalbrew install doxygen
brew install graphviz
brew cask install mactex
- Install pip3: in terminal
brew install python3
- Install ninja build system: in terminal
brew install cmake
brew install pkg-config
sudo -H pip3 install scikit-build
sudo -H pip3 install ninja
- Install meson build configuration: in terminal
sudo -H pip3 install meson==0.42.1
- Install python plotting capabilities (optional): in terminal
sudo -H pip3 install matplotlib
sudo -H pip3 install pandas
- Install Oracle Java run-time (required for LmcpGen)
- Install
ant
for command line build of java programs: in terminalbrew install ant
- Install NetBeans and Oracle Java JDK (optional)
- Download the Mac OSX version
- Install .dmg
- Enable C/C++ plug-in in NetBeans (optional)
- Open NetBeans
- Choose Tools->Plugins from the top menu
- In the
Available Plugins
tab, search forC++
- Select
C/C++
and clickInstall
- Build
- Install Visual Studio 2017 Community Edition
- Ensure C++ selected in
Workloads
tab - Ensure
Git for Windows
is selected inIndividual components
tab
- Ensure C++ selected in
- Install Git with Bash shell
- Install Python 3
- Make sure to check
Add Python 3.7 to PATH
- Choose standard install (
Install Now
, requires admin) - Verify installation by:
python --version
incmd
prompt - Verify pip is also installed:
pip --version
incmd
prompt - If unable to get python on path, follow this answer using location
C:\Users\[user]\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python37-32\
- Make sure to check
- Install meson (due to Boost linking difficulty, a patched version of meson is required)
- In Git Bash shell:
git -c http.sslVerify=false clone https://github.com/derekkingston/meson.git
- Install meson in Git Bash shell:
cd meson; python setup.py install
- In Git Bash shell:
- Install Boost 1.67
- Note: the above link is for VS2017 pre-compiled libraries. To compile from source, you must install at the location:
C:\local\boost_1_67_0
- Note: the above link is for VS2017 pre-compiled libraries. To compile from source, you must install at the location:
- Pull UxAS repositories (from Git Bash shell)
git -c http.sslVerify=false clone https://github.com/afrl-rq/OpenUxAS.git
git -c http.sslVerify=false clone https://github.com/afrl-rq/LmcpGen.git
git -c https://github.com/afrl-rq/OpenAMASE.git
- (optional) Build OpenAMASE or download and place in the
OpenAMASE\OpenAMASE\dist
directory- Load the OpenAMASE project in NetBeans and click
Build
- Load the OpenAMASE project in NetBeans and click
- Auto-create the UxAS messaging library
- Download released executable from GitHub
- Place
LmcpGen.jar
inLmcpGen/dist
folder - From the Git Bash shell in the root UxAS directory, run
bash RunLmcpGen.sh
- Note: For simplicity, make sure the LMCPGen, OpenUxAS, and OpenAMASE repositories follow the folder structure labeled in the Build UxAS section.
- Prepare build
- Open VS command prompt (Tools -> Visual Studio Command Prompt)
- Note: If the Visual Studio Command Prompt is absent from Visual Studio, it is also possible to perform the following actions by searching for the
Developer Command Prompt for VS 2017
application and switching the working directory to the root OpenUxAS directory python prepare
meson.py build --backend=vs
- A Visual Studio solution named
UxAS.sln
will be in thebuild
folder
- Build project with Visual Studio
- Open project file
UxAS.sln
in theOpenUxAS/build
directory - (optional) Remove
REGEN
,RUN_INSTALL
, andRUN_TESTS
projects from the solution - In the
Solution Explorer
, right-click theuxas
project, and selectBuild
from the context menu
- Open project file
- The Visual Studio backend for Meson mostly works, but will fail when regenerating build files. If you modify one of the
meson.build
files, delete thebuild
directory and runmeson.py build --backend=vs
again. The steps following themeson.build
command must also be performed. - The UxAS test suite uses some hardcoded POSIX-style paths, and so does not currently work on Windows.