Transitioning to Open Source at 6000m

The Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) Sentry recently completed its first milestone in transitioning from a legacy monolithic software system to a modern distributed architecture based on the Robot Operating System (ROS). The goal of the upgrade is to accelerate new feature development without sacrificing operational reliability. Sentry is a 6000m depth operational vehicle for scientific users who require both cutting-edge AUV technology and reliable performance during standard surveys. ROS’s defederated architecture uses independent processes to isolate functionality. Sentry’s ROS-based stack leverages this design to test new functionality and support sharing software with other vehicles. Several new base libraries accelerated development providing a full-featured base for subsequent development. Following software engineering best-practices, Sentry’s ROS upgrade included a variety of testing techniques culminating in an 11-day engineering validation cruise. The operational software failure rate has not risen since the upgrade, although further dives are needed to characterize the impact. New features have already been deployed on science cruises using ROS tools and new simulation capabilities. Future stages of the transition will focus on porting legacy components to ROS.