OpenJAUS

SAE Document Numbers

The JAUS standard is released as a set of SAE documents which are versioned using a letter suffix. The first release doesn't have a suffix (e.g. AS6009), while subsequent releases add a letter suffix (e.g AS6009A, AS6009B, etc). The document number change occurs anytime the document is updated.

JAUS Service Version

The SAE document numbers only represent changes in the document and do not indicate changes to the JAUS services themselves. Simple updates, such as a typo, could cause a document to be revised while there would be no change to any of the service definitions. The service version number should be used to determine the compatibility across SAE documents.

JAUS services use a major/minor semantic versioning scheme such that versions with the same major number are backwards compatible.

Versions of a service are backwards compatible if:

• All the messages from the older version can be created/used with the new version 
  • i.e. messages are not removed in the new version
• All the messages from the older version can be made byte-identical
  • i.e. there are either no new fields or the new fields are optional and can be left out using an existing presence vector
• Input messages from the older version elicit the same output message response
  • i.e. sending a query or set message still causes the same report or response message to be sent
  • Note: sending a new response message would be okay
• No new messages are not required to make the service work as it did previously

JAUS Service Set Version

The JAUS standard does not officially have a JAUS service set structure. However, among the JAUS community the service set terminology is used colloquially and is often the title of the official SAE documents. Often, a service set name and version number will be used instead of the official SAE document number. For example, it is common to talk about core v1.1 and manipulator v2.0 instead of AS5710A and AS6057A respectively.

This informal service set terminology often makes it difficult for new members to the community to understand which document is being referenced. The service set name is usually the title of the SAE document and the service set version will relate to the version of at least one service in that document. For example, if the highest version of any service in document AS5710A is v1.1, the services specified in AS5710A will be informally referred as core service set v1.1.

Below we provide a mapping of the SAE document numbers to the informal service set name and version used by the community.