Software Architecture
The software architecture of the mu-Net infrastructure aims to provide an integrated software platform for sensing, communication and robotics. The objectives include: (a) Execute mobile missions including sensing, localization, real-time remote command & control, etc.; (b) Support communications of different types of data traffic: asynchronous data traffic (e.g., sensing data, navigation data, environment data, network and system monitoring, probing data), and time-bounded data (mission command and control, emergency event reports, on-line reconfiguration); (c) Be extensible and flexible to different hardware capacities or software functions; (d) Support simulation, emulation, and real field experiments; and (e) Support optimizations under various resource constraints.
The design of the software is illustrated below. In this architecture, we integrate underwater networking capacity into ROS (Robot Operating System) [1] and MOOS (Mission Oriented Operating Suite) [2]. ROS is an open source robotics middleware suite with a collection of software for robot software development. It is a well know software suite in the robotics domain with a large user space and numerous resources. MOOS, on the other hand, is popular in the marine robotics community. It is a C++ cross platform that has been used widely for various autonomous underwater vehicles. Leveraging the resources of ROS and MOOS, the mu-Net software can have access to a plethora of application software, from sensing, localization, command & control, to navigation. In addition, the communication and networking capacity is provided by Aqua-Net[3]. It is a highly flexible, reconfigurable and customizable protocol stack, designed specifically for underwater networks.

Software Design
Software Demo
Documentations
Videos
ROS + Aqua-Net Demo
MOOS + Aqua-Net Demo
References
- Morgan Quigley, Brian Gerkey, Ken Conley, Josh Faust, Tully Foote, Jeremy Leibs, Eric Berger, RobWheeler, and Andrew Ng, ROS: An Open-source Robot Operating System, in Proceedings of ICRA Workshop on Open Source Software, 2009
- Paul Newman, An overview of the MOOS Architecture, MOOS project website.
- Zheng Peng, Zhong Zhou, Jun-Hong Cui and Zhijie Shi,
Aqua-Net: An Underwater Sensor Network Architecture: Design, Implementation, and Initial Testing,
in Proceedings of IEEE/MTS OCEANS, Biloxi, MS, USA, 2009.