1   Overview of the MOOS-IvP Autonomy Project

1.1 Brief Background of MOOS-IvP
1.2 Sponsors of MOOS-IvP
1.3 Where to Get Further Information
     1.3.1 Websites and Email Lists
     1.3.2 Documentation

1.1   Brief Background of MOOS-IvP    [top]

MOOS was written by Paul Newman in 2001 to support operations with autonomous marine vehicles in the MIT Ocean Engineering and the MIT Sea Grant programs. At the time Newman was a post-doc working with John Leonard and has since joined the faculty of the Mobile Robotics Group at Oxford University. MOOS continues to be developed and maintained by Newman at Oxford and the most current version can be found at themoos.org. The MOOS software available in the MOOS-IvP project includes a snapshot of the MOOS code distributed from Oxford. The IvP Helm was developed in 2004 for autonomous control on unmanned marine surface craft, and later underwater platforms. It was written by Mike Benjamin as a post-doc working with John Leonard, and as a research scientist for the Naval Undersea Warfare Center in Newport Rhode Island. The IvP Helm is a single MOOS process that uses multi-objective optimization to implement behavior coordination.

Acronyms    [top]

MOOS stands for "Mission Oriented Operating Suite" and its original use was for the Bluefin Odyssey III vehicle owned by MIT. IvP stands for "Interval Programming" which is a mathematical programming model for multi-objective optimization. In the IvP model each objective function is a piecewise linear construct where each piece is an interval in N-Space. The IvP model and algorithms are included in the IvP Helm software as the method for representing and reconciling the output of helm behaviors. The term interval programming was inspired by the mathematical programming models of linear programming (LP) and integer programming (IP). The pseudo-acronym IvP was chosen simply in this spirit and to avoid acronym clashing.

1.2   Sponsors of MOOS-IvP    [top]

Original development of MOOS and IvP were more or less infrastructure by-products of other sponsored research in (mostly marine) robotics. Those sponsors were primarily The Office of Naval Research (ONR), as well as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). MOOS and IvP are currently funded by Code 311 at ONR, Dr. Don Wagner and Dr. Behzad Kamgar-Parsi. Testing and development of course work at MIT is further supported by Battelle, Mr. Mike Mellott. The Battelle sponsorship has been very instrumental in the development of the documentation and online course material. MOOS is additionally supported in the U.K. by EPSRC. Early development of IvP benefited from the support of the In-house Laboratory Independent Research (ILIR) program at the Naval Undersea Warfare Center in Newport RI. The ILIR program is funded by ONR.

1.3   Where to Get Further Information    [top]

1.3.1   Websites and Email Lists    [top]

There are two web sites - the MOOS web site maintained by Oxford University, and the MOOS-IvP web site maintained by MIT. At the time of this writing they are at the following URLs:

What is the difference in content between the two web sites? As discussed previously, MOOS-IvP, as a set of software, refers to the software maintained and distributed from Oxford plus additional MOOS applications including the IvP Helm and library of behaviors. The software bundle released at moos-ivp.org does include the MOOS software from Oxford - usually a particular released version. For the absolute latest in the core MOOS software and documentation on Oxford MOOS modules, the Oxford web site is your source. For the latest on the core IvP Helm, behaviors, and MOOS tools distributed by MIT, the moos-ivp.org web site is the source.

    There are two mailing lists open to the public. The first list is for MOOS users, and the second is for MOOS-IvP users. If the topic is related to one of the MOOS modules distributed from the Oxford web site, the proper email list is the "moosusers" mailing list. You can join the "moosusers" mailing list at the following URL:

https://lists.csail.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/moosusers

For topics related to the IvP Helm or modules distributed on the moos-ivp.org web site that are not part of the Oxford MOOS distribution (see the software page on moos-ivp.org for help in drawing the distinction), the "moosivp" mailing list is appropriate. You can join the "moosivp" mailing list at the following URL:

https://lists.csail.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/moosivp

1.3.2   Documentation    [top]

Documentation on MOOS can be found on the MOOS web site:

www.themoos.org

This includes documentation on the MOOS architecture, programming new MOOS applications as well as documentation on several bread-and-butter applications such as pAntler, pLogger, uMS, pShare, iRemote, iMatlab, pScheduler and more. Documentation on the IvP Helm, behaviors and autonomy related MOOS applications not from Oxford can be found on the www.moos-ivp.org web site under the Documentation link.

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