Application: pContactMgrV20

Brief Synopsis:

Manages known contacts and generates alerts consumed by the helm.

Authors:

  • Michael Benjamin

Groups:

Dependencies:

Distribution:

  • moos-ivp.org

Documentation:

Contact Email:

  • mikerb@mit.edu

Function:

The pContactMgrV20 application is newer version to replace pBasicContactMgr. It is designed to be backward compatible with pBasicContactMgr but for ease in adoption, the user continues to have the option of using the earlier version. Like pBasicContactMgr, it deals with information about other known vehicles in its vicinity. It is not a sensor application, but rather handles incoming "contact reports" which may represent information received by the vehicle over a communications link, or may be the result of on-board sensor processing. The contact manager may also may be configured to post alerts, i.e., MOOS variables, with select content about one or more of the contacts. An alert is typically used by the helm to spawn a behavior for a new contact, for collision avoidance for example. This new contact manager has better suport for memory management, guarding against unbounded growth of contacts, using a policy for dropping contacts based on contact age, range, and total number of contacts. It also has imroved support for exclusion filters, allowing the user to control which types of contacts are ignored. This can be configured in both the contact manager and within behaviors using the contact manager. The exclusion filter can also be based on the operation region. The new contact manager also supports some swarm autonomy algorithms by posting configurable information about the set of teammates in range, and/or the closest teammate.

Lines of Code:

  • 1,815 (with libraries: 47,333)

Files of Code:

  • 11 (with libraries: 392)

Work Years:

  • 0.37 (with libraries: 10.68)