Creation of an API for sensors and servos

Inherent in the Air Force's mission of airborne intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) is the need to collect data from sensors. Technology is constantly advancing and, as such, new sensors are also being constantly produced. The manufacturers of these sensors typically provide with their hardware free software for communication with their sensor. These binaries work well for mature systems as interfaces and communication protocols are already firmly established. However, most research software is, by its very nature, immature and typically unable to communicate with sensor packages "out of the box." Because of this, researcher productivity is hindered as they have to focus on hardware communication in addition to their immediate research goals. As such, the creation of a library to talk to common sensors and other hardware is needed. This paper describes the various libraries currently available and their limitations. It also documents a combined effort of the Air Force Research Lab (AFRL) and Wright State University (WSU) to create a "super library" that removes as many of the limitations of each of the individual libraries as possible.