OSPO Projects

The Loci framework was originally developed in the late 1990s with support from the NSF ERC for Computational Field Simulations to simplify the development of complex numerical models that can take advantage of massively parallel high end computing systems. The framework provides a rule-based programming model whereby an application is described in terms of a collection of simple computational kernels. A key feature of the Loci framework are that these computational kernels are documented such that the data-flow between kernels can be extracted using relational annotations that are provided by the rules. In this system the given data is provided as a set of facts (relations). The application is then given in the form of a collection of transformation rules. Finally, the user makes a query (e.g. what is the heat flux at this surface?) From this the scheduler provided by the Loci framework provide a composition of the provided transformations that will answer the query. The effect of the programming model is to place numerical programming in a sphere similar to one of information management using relation databases where problems are solved using powerful relational queries.

MAVS provides the ability to evaluate the performance of autonomous perception and navigation software in real-time. The software is built with an MPI-based framework for coupling parallel processes, as well as a physics-based sensor simulator for LIDAR, GPS, cameras and other sensors.

While MAVS is a fully functional standalone simulator, additional wrappers allow MAVS to be integrated with robotic development tools such as the Robotic Operating System (ROS).