Interfacing ship systems
Communication with ship systems and sensors is time-consuming and difficult. It requires knowledge about the physical locations, protocol, settings and data format. Ratatosk facilitates simple reuse and development of vessel-independent ship applications by providing onboard data spaces .
What is it?
Ratatosk is a set of applications and libraries for real-time data
exchange.
It simplifies the interfacing of ship systems for purposes such as logging, monitoring
and control. Ratatosk includes an API which provides a bridge between ship systems and
your own software, as well as a set of executables with ready-made functionalities.
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Concept
Ratatosk creates a data space for
real-time communication and data exchange.
Communication is based on
publish/subscribe over the local network, based solely on the
name of the data, eliminating the need to know ship-specific
information (such as IP addresses, ports, protocols, baud rate, etc.).
This makes it possible to develop applications that interact with the
ship's systems, without adapting to specific ships. This is similar to
how you can install an app on a smartphone without knowing
details about e.g. its accelerometer.
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Features
Ratatosk facilitates vessel-agnostic higher-order functionality.
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- Makes sensor data easily available.
- Is a foundation for applications which interface ship systems without adaptation to individual ships.
- Out-of-the-box support for distributed applications.
- Builds on Data Distribution Service
- Can communicate with other DDS impementations
- Built on open and proven standards.
- Uses publish-subscribe communication
- Gives easy handling of complex data structures.
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Roadmap
Ratatosk is in the process of being made available for the public.
This work will consist of four phases, corresponding to the four
different Ratatosk resources described below.
Executables
The Ratatosk executables enables its users to take advantage of ready made functionality, typically for purposes such as interfacing ship sensors and systems and logging of acquired data to file.
Shared libraries
The Ratatosk shared libraries offer a simple way to use limited DDS functionality in your own software to exchange data. One use case could be to share data between a hardware interfacing application, a state estimator and a real-time plotting application over a LAN.
Expected available: August 2023
API
The Ratatosk API can be used for adding Ratatosk functionality to your own software or to build tailor made Ratatosk components. This can be used for example to create applications for onboard decision support.
Expected available: December 2023
Source code
The Ratatosk source code will be made available both as an assurance for the Ratatosk users, simplify development and to facilitate extending it as desired.
Expected available: August 2024