diff --git a/docs/overview/concept-of-operations.mdx b/docs/overview/concept-of-operations.mdx index 173dee2..583681f 100644 --- a/docs/overview/concept-of-operations.mdx +++ b/docs/overview/concept-of-operations.mdx @@ -2,7 +2,7 @@ ## Introduction -The planning, scheduling and sequencing are common needs across many space missions, yet a common solution does not yet exist. Many space missions clone and own legacy solutions inherited from a similar, previous mission. AMMOS is dedicated to provide solutions shared across missions, liberating them from re-inventing the wheel that address the same needs and major cost of maintenance. Aerie is the new generation AMMOS product, not only providing a powerful simulation framework like its predecessors, it also addresses the crucial need of enabling less expert users to input their planning requests, trigger simulations, automate scheduling and similar through a collaborative web application. +Planning, scheduling and sequencing are common needs across many space missions, yet a common solution does not yet exist. Many space missions clone and own legacy solutions inherited from a similar, previous mission. AMMOS is dedicated to providing solutions shared across missions, liberating them from re-inventing the wheel and major cost of maintenance. Aerie is the new generation AMMOS product, not only providing a powerful simulation framework like its predecessors, it also addresses the crucial need of enabling less expert users to input their planning requests, trigger simulations, automate scheduling and similar through a collaborative web application. Aerie is designed to address the following capability gaps: @@ -11,12 +11,12 @@ Aerie is designed to address the following capability gaps: - Allow missions to make use of existing libraries for modeling, and write custom code in their mission model as they see fit - Allow missions to provide a web deployment of a planning tool such that operators with limited programming skills can create valid activity plans and run simulations - Support real time collaboration and and parallel hypothesis testing such that many more iterations of an activity plan can be tested within the same time frame -- Allow automation and manual modifications to coexist through out the planning process -- Provide a low code constraint checking mechanism to validate simulation outputs which can be automated largely -- Provide a low code scheduling mechanism that can scaffold parts of or generate complete activity plans according to goal snippets -- Support an easy to use and verified translation from activities to flight system recognized sequences of commands +- Allow automation and manual modifications to coexist throughout the planning process +- Provide a low-code constraint checking mechanism to validate simulation outputs which can be largely automated +- Provide a low-code scheduling mechanism that can scaffold parts of or generate complete activity plans according to goal snippets +- Support an easy-to-use and verified translation from activities to sequences of commands that are recognized by the flight system -Note that none of the capabilities above are completely new. Different software solutions have offered pieces of the listed capabilities, different or more limited flavors. Aerie's mission is to cover as many key steps in the whole activity planning and sequencing workflow in one deployed tool with dedicated components. +Note that none of the capabilities above are completely new. Other software solutions have offered pieces of the listed capabilities in different or more limited flavors. Aerie's mission is to cover as many key steps in the whole activity planning and sequencing workflow in one deployed tool with dedicated components. Although Aerie does not aim to be a complete solution for every mission, it has a strong emphasis on extensibility, customization and 3rd party tool integrations. @@ -28,23 +28,23 @@ Mission operations may involve labour intensive, error prone tasks such as autho ### Design for customization and configurability -Aerie tools and services allow systems and services to be configured customized to meet different mission and user needs. For instance, Aerie simulations can be configured to run at different fidelity levels depending on the planners' need at different steps of the planning process. Or an Aerie deployment can be customized to accommodate many parallel simulation and scheduling requests scaled for usage. Similarly Aerie UI can be customized by mission system or by the users interactively to display data relevant for different contexts. +Aerie tools and services allow systems and services to be customized to meet different mission and user needs. For instance, Aerie simulations can be configured to run at different fidelity levels depending on the planners' need at different steps of the planning process. Or an Aerie deployment can be customized to accommodate many parallel simulation and scheduling requests scaled for usage. Similarly Aerie UI can be customized by the mission system or by the users interactively to display data relevant for different contexts. ### Design for usability -An integral design guideline for Aerie is to improve user experience for all users. Note that the experience of mission modelers creating a mission model with Aerie framework is highly different than the experience of scientists performing activity planning through a web application, or the experience of an engineer deploying Aerie for all mission users. The Aerie mission modeling framework is striking a tough balance between expressibility and ease of learning. One of the key advantages of using Aerie for modeling is the discrete event simulation engine that takes care of integrating resources for the modelers, handling concurrency of events. This allows mission modelers to model unit behaviors independent from one another. Similarly Aerie web application enables scientists engineers to trigger simulation with a no code approach, and perform automated scheduling and simulation analysis with a low code approach. +An integral design guideline for Aerie is to improve user experience for all users. Note that the experience of mission modelers creating a mission model with Aerie framework is highly different than the experience of scientists performing activity planning through a web application, or the experience of an engineer deploying Aerie for all mission users. The Aerie mission modeling framework is striking a tough balance between expressibility and ease of learning. One of the key advantages of using Aerie for modeling is the discrete event simulation engine that takes care of integrating resources for the modelers, handling concurrency of events. This allows mission modelers to model unit behaviors independent from one another. Similarly Aerie web application enables scientists and engineers to trigger simulation with a no-code approach, and perform automated scheduling and simulation analysis with a low-code approach. ### Design for many contexts -Aerie can be used in many different contexts other than mission operations where planning and scheduling generally follows strict processes. Aerie can be used to model and simulate any discrete events that effect shared resources. These resources can be on board the spacecraft or on the ground. Aerie can be effectively used in mission planning to generate and evaluate long term schedules for the purposes of validating high level mission requirements, and to derive low level requirements. Similarly Aerie can be used even earlier phases to develop mission concepts. By design Aerie does not implement mission business logic or dictate workflows. +Aerie can be used in many different contexts other than mission operations where planning and scheduling generally follows strict processes. Aerie can be used to model and simulate any discrete events that affect shared resources. These resources can be on board the spacecraft or on the ground. Aerie can be effectively used in mission planning to generate and evaluate long-term schedules for the purposes of validating high-level mission requirements, and to derive low-level requirements. Similarly Aerie can be used in even earlier phases to develop mission concepts. By design Aerie does not implement mission business logic or dictate workflows. ### Eliminate duality in planning and sequencing -Traditionally planning and sequencing are independent, serial processes where operators are responsible from accurately translating activities into spacecraft commands. This duality reduces efficiency, leads to redundant validations at the activity planning and sequencing steps, and can be error prone. Whereas, principles of and simulation are embarrassingly similar for activities and commands. Aerie aims to eliminate this duality by using the same simulation engine for activity and command simulations, which can provide an option for missions to do one simulation where abstracted activities decompose into actual commands. +Traditionally planning and sequencing are independent, serial processes where operators are responsible for accurately translating activities into spacecraft commands. This duality reduces efficiency, leads to redundant validations at the activity planning and sequencing steps, and can be error prone. Aerie aims to eliminate this duality by using the same simulation engine for activity and command simulations, which can provide an option for missions to do one simulation where abstracted activities decompose into actual commands. ### Design for customization -Aerie tools and services should be extendable and customizable to answer the needs of missions with different levels of complexity. In the following sections, we describe how Aerie can be used at its full capacity by a highly complex and automated mission. On the other end of the spectrum, a mission may choose manual activity planning, basically not utilizing modeling, simulation or scheduling capabilities, while leveraging command expansion to automate sequence generation based on planning inputs. The mission can utilize its flight software simulator to simulate commands, upload resulting resource profiles back to Aerie for visualization and analysis. We provide a few examples of such different mission operations Section 4.14. +Aerie tools and services should be extendable and customizable to answer the needs of missions with different levels of complexity. In the following sections, we describe how Aerie can be used at its full capacity by a highly complex and automated mission. On the other end of the spectrum, a mission may choose manual activity planning, basically not utilizing modeling, simulation or scheduling capabilities, while leveraging command expansion to automate sequence generation based on planning inputs. The mission can utilize its flight software simulator to simulate commands, upload resulting resource profiles back to Aerie for visualization and analysis. We provide a few examples of such different mission operations in Section 4.14.