OpenJAUS History

OpenJAUS is the leading source for JAUS-compliant middleware for unmanned systems. Founded in 2006, OpenJAUS can trace it roots to the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge as graduate students Bob Touchton, Danny Kent and Tom Galluzzo were tasked with developing a JAUS compliant architecture for use with the DARPA Grand Challenge entry from the University of Florida. Drawing on several years of JAUS experience at the time, the students developed an SDK for use by the half dozen graduate students working on the project. In October 2005 the NaviGATOR vehicle traveled about 18 miles on the grand challenge course before being disabled. The JAUS software continued to run for the next 12 hours in standby, with logs from that day showing over 12 million JAUS messages transmitted amongst the nine JAUS nodes on the system.

In 2006, the OpenJAUS codebase was publically released for the first time under a BSD License. Based on the software developed at the University of Florida, OpenJAUS 1.0 saw adoption by a number of companies looking to fulfill JAUS requirements. In the summer of 2008 OpenJAUS held its first Developer's Conference in conjunction with the release of OpenJAUS 3.3. This was based on the then current JAUS Reference Architecture version 3.3 and included a number of suggestions from OpenJAUS users such as a C++ version of the Node Manager, better service connection support, and a more consise and robust component template.

In 2010, OpenJAUS LLC was formed by Danny Kent and Tom Galluzzo as the corporate entity to maintain, improve and advance the OpenJAUS platform. The JAUS standard had undergone a number of significant changes and the need for a new SDK based on this new flavor of JAUS (often referred to as SAE JAUS) was clear. OpenJAUS LLC took ownership of that challenge and began development of OpenJAUS 4.0 as a completely new and robust solution to the challenges and opportunities presented by SAE JAUS. OpenJAUS 4.0 is completely re-written from the ground up based on Model Driven Development (MDD). OpenJAUS 4.0 was released publically in early summer 2011.

OpenJAUS LLC

OpenJAUS LLC is dedicated to providing the most complete and robust middleware solutions for Unmanned Systems developers. Drawing on our rich background in designing, building and fielding real-world unmanned systems, we strive for simple solutions to everyday problems. With a combined history of over 20 robotic projects, Tom and Danny have faced almost every problem in the Unmanned Systems community from wireless radios to LIDAR sensors to manipulators and world modeling. The OpenJAUS team is dedicated to providing our users with the best support and help in fulfilling the needs of their customers, both JAUS and non-JAUS programs alike. Contact us today to see how we can help you solve your software problems and how OpenJAUS can enable you to develop better, faster and cheaper than your competitors.

OpenJAUS Co-Founders

Dr. Thomas Galluzzo, OpenJAUS Cofounder Education: Ph.D. Mechanical Engineering / Robotics. University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, 2006 B.S. – Aerospace Engineering, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, Daytona, FL, 2002 Relevant Experience: Dr. Galluzzo is a Senior Robotics Engineer at the National Robotics Engineering Center (NREC) at Carnegie Mellon University, and cofounder of OpenJAUS, LLC. He previously served as a robotics engineer for Harris Corporation Mechatronics. There he led internal research projects for autonomous robotic manipulation systems and haptic robotic manipulation control systems. Additionally Dr. Galluzzo has led the design and development of several autonomous vehicle systems. He has worked with Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) robotics group, supporting the development of perimeter security autonomous ground vehicles. He competed in both the 2004 and 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge events, where he served as the lead systems integrator, navigation and controls engineer. In 2006 Dr. Galluzzo cofounded OpenJAUS, a leading software implementation of the Joint Architecture for Unmanned Systems (JAUS) that is used worldwide. He has led the development of OpenJAUS architecture and implementation, as well as advancement of the JAUS standard itself. Dr. Galluzzo was the document sponsor for the published JAUS Mobility Service Set (AS6009) standard.

Dr. Danny Kent, OpenJAUS Cofounder Education: Ph.D. Mechanical Engineering / Robotics. University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, 2007 B.S. – Aerospace Engineering, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, Daytona, FL, 2002 Relevant Experience: Dr. Kent is a Robotics Engineer and Co-Founder of OpenJAUS, LLC. He has been involved in the Unmanned Ground Vehicles (UGV) community for over ten years and participated in two DARPA Grand Challenge events. As the lead systems and robotics engineer at Defense Technologies Inc, Dr. Kent designed, developed and field tested the RANLO 1 Tactical UGV. The RANLO 1 system was designed using the OpenJAUS SDK for interoperability with DTI’s OpenUMI Control Station software. He has been a member of the Joint Architecture for Unmanned Systems (JAUS) working group since 2004 and currently holds the position as the Chair for the Environment Sensing and World Modeling task group under the SAE’s Unmanned Systems standards division (AS-4). In this role, Dr. Kent was the document sponsor of the JAUS Environment Sensing Service Set (AS6060). Dr. Kent’s interests include system design, world modeling and software development for unmanned systems.