Terminology

Action Station

Definition: An area where certain actions should be performed if the presence of an AGV is detected. An example action may be to send a mission to the AGV, or to change some PLC state

Agent

Aliases: Truck, AGV, SDV, Employee, Operator, AMR, Vehicle
Definition: Anything that can connect to Maestro's APIs or which Maestro has been explicitly setup to communicate with
Examples: Autonomous forklifts, Robotic shuttles, Multi-vehicle sub systems, Human operators, Other PLC based devices such as conveyors, scanners, and palletizers

Agent Emulator

Definition: A software application on the Fleet Management System that replicates the functionality of an agent in a simulated environment. Used for testing and simulation

Agent Hub

Definition: A standard set of services and libraries within Maestro that manages agent types and agents

Agent Type

Definition: A classification of agent or group of agents that share a common set of attributes. Configurations about the agents are configured at the agent type level
Examples: ANT vehicle, ACI vehicle, PLC device

AGV

Definition: Automated Guided Vehicle. Type of Agent. Refers to more conventional pathfollowing systems with limited autonomy

Alias

Definition: Another name for something
Examples: Inventory location aliases so that multiple names can refer to the same location

Approach Path

Definition: Path from agent's expected location to the first action of the task

Container

Aliases: Commodity, Package, Item
Definition: A package, item, or other entity that is carried by an agent during the processing of a task or set of tasks
Examples: Pallet, Bag, Tote, Carton

Environment

Definition: A set of conditions in which Maestro can be deployed. Manifests are used to specify each environment, detailing the composition of versioned applications and their associated cluster specific configuration
Examples: Bastian, Raymond, Amazon

Export Adapter

Definition: An application which contains the services to notify consumers about state changes within Maestro using some notification mechanism such as SignalR

Fleet

Aliases: Vehicles, Agents, Workers
Definition: A general term for the entirety of agents in the system for use in completing tasks, as well as the route and location information involved in the relevant space

Fleet Management System (FMS)

Aliases: Fleet Manager, Fleet Management, FM
Definition: The system that is responsible for task assignment, route planning, sytem configuration, and operator input
Examples: Exacta Maestro, T-One, ARC

Graph QL

Definition: An open-source data query and manipulation language for APIs and a query runtime engine. It enables declarative data fetching where a client can specify exactly what data it needs from an API

Host System

Aliases: Host, WES, WMS
Definition: The system that gives direction to the Fleet Management System to perform missions. All external interface protocols from the fleet management sytem are handled through the host system
Examples: Exacta WES, WMS

Human Machine Interface (HMI)

Aliases: Computer, Workstation, Fleet Management Screen
Definition: A workstation or screen that displays information about the fleet including agents, missions, agent status, mission status, and relevant historical data about the Fleet Management System
Examples: Exacta Maestro Web HMI

Inventory

Definition: The Maestro application responsible for tracking inventory locations, including their reservation state and container state

LogHub

Definition: An application used to collect logs from any service, and forward them to the long term storage of choice such as ELK stack

Map

Definition: Graphs that represents the facility. Graphs are composed of edges which connect nodes. The map can be used for node reservations and route reservations. A JSON map can be uploaded to Maestro map service, which is responsible for proximity based routing, node reservation, and more

Mission

Aliases: Order, Directive, Host task
Definition: A collection of tasks linked together for bulk execution by a single agent. The mission's child tasks are usually executed sequentially, though sometimes consecutive child tasks can be executed concurrently
Examples: "Put a pallet", "Stage a container", "Pick an order"

Mission Plan

Aliases: Task Map, Mission Map, Workflow
Definition: The methodology or translation from mission to list of tasks. There may be multiple potential plan paths for a single mission. The actual mission plan executed is decided by the Fleet Mangement System based on fleet system criteria

Navigation Strategy

Aliases: Localization
Definition: The methodology(s) implemented by the agent to create movement in the environment. An agent may use multiple in tandem to handle various circumstances
Examples: Natural Features, Wire Guide

Observability

Definition: In software engineering, more specifically in distributed computing, the ability to collect data about programs' execution, modules' internal states, and the communication among components
Examples: Maestro pushes its logs to ELK stack (Elasticsearch, Kibana, Beats, and Logstash). Maestro also pushes its distributed traces to Elastic APM, which is built on top of ELK stack, to monitor its performance

Operator

Aliases: Person, User, Employee
Definition: A person that is capable of perfoming functions (managerial or functional) in the Fleet Management System, Host System, or as an agent in the system
Examples: HMI Monitor, Manager, Exacta Mobile User

Payload

Definition: Instruction for defining a task
Examples: The Maestro task model has 2 different payloads: the original criteria payload and the final instruction payload. The original criteria payload, provided during task creation, defines the task with an optional level of specificity. The concrete instruction payload, re-resolvable at assignment time, explicitly specifies the exact instructions for how to perform the task. A common example of a loosely defined criteria payload is using the transfer task location query to specify that one of many staging locations should be used: the associated instruction payload resolution should select (and possibly reserve) a specific one of those staging locations

PLC

Definition: A ruggedized computer used for industrial automation. These controllers can automate a specific process, machine function, or even an entire production line
Examples: Toyopuc, AllenBradly

PLC Hub

Definition: An application that provides access to PLC data with generic REST APIs for a variety of PLC types

PowerShell

Definition: A task automation and configuration management program from Microsoft, consisting of a command-line shell and the associated scripting language
Examples: Maestro uses PowerShell scripts to automate various tasks such as creating, removing, and configuring environments

Real Time Locating Service (RTLS)

Aliases: GeoLocation
Definition: A mechanism outside of direct integration that allows the Fleet Management System to locate the agent or payload in the system in real time
Examples: Bastian Bluehound, RFID, Wifi Triangulation

Route Plan

Aliases: Waypoint list, Assigned route
Definition: The specific list of waypoints, created by the Route Planning service, for the agent to follow when completing a specific task

Route Planning

Definition: A responsibility of the Fleet Management System. This involves creating a list of waypoints for an agent to follow when completing an assigned task

SDV

Definition: Self-Driving Vehicle. Unlike an AGV, an SDV is able to independently plan, navigate and execute complex goals as issued by the Fleet Management System

Service Fabric

Definition: A distributed systems platform that makes it easy to package, deploy, and manage scalable and reliable microservices and containers
Examples: Maestro apps and services are deployed in Azure Service Fabric

Shared Area Management

Definition: Management of shared areas by different vehicles to prevent crashes and deadlocks

Task

Aliases: Action
Definition: An 'action', understandable by an agent that is communicated as a directive between the fleet management system and the agent
Examples: If mission is to "Put a pallet in a location", a set of tasks may include "Pick up pallet", "Move pallet to staging", "move pallet to final destination"

Task Assignment

Definition: A responsibility of the Fleet Management System. This involves breaking missions from the host system into tasks based on the mission plan as well as assigning the resulting tasks to agents based on many real time states of the fleet. These criteria include agent positions, mission priorities, workload and others
Examples: Exacta Maestro Task Assignment

Task Assignment Status

Definition: Status that are used to identify different states of assignment during the life cycle of a task
Examples: New, NotEligible, Eligible, Assigned, Dispatched, TaskEnded

Task Execution Status

Definition: Status that are used to identify different states of execution during the life cycle of a task
Examples: New, NotEligible, Eligible, Started, Completed, Faulted, Cancelled

Traffic Management System (TMS)

Aliases: Traffic Manager, Traffic Mangement
Definition: The system that is responsible for managing real time traffic interaction occurences between agents
Examples: Exacta Maestro, Liasson, Bluebotoics, Kollmorgen

Task Path

Definition: Path between the actions of the task. When it comes to vehicle bidding, the Approach Path will be different per vehicle, while the TaskPath will be the same for all vehicles of the same Agent Type

Task Queue

Aliases: Task List
Definition: The list of tasks assigned to an agent. The assigned tasks queue is not a collection of dispatched tasks. The first task in the assigned tasks queue should be the single actively dispatched task

Task Type

Aliases: Task Class, Task Category
Definition: The category of task that can be completed by an agent type
Examples: TransferTask, Move, Mission, ProductPick

Waypoint

Aliases: Node
Definition: A coordinate in the system space that is fed to an agent to provide direction to movement according to the assigned task list for that agent. One or more waypoints may be given to an agent at a time based on the capability of the agent