Using XML for Instrument Description, Communication and Control of the SOFIA/HAWC Instrument

The goal of the Instrument Remote Control (IRC) project is to develop a distributed framework from science user to instrument which will provide robust interactive and reconfigurable control and monitoring of remote instrumentation. The focus of the joint effort between NASA/GSFC's Advanced Architectures and Automation branch (Code 588) and Century Computing has been infrared astronomy, although most of the techniques employed have much wider applicability. This poster presentation will describe the work currently underway for Stratospheric Observatory For Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) in developing an Extensible Markup Language (XML) vocabulary to aid in instrument description, communication and control. In particular, the instruments to be controlled are the High-resolution Airborne Wideband Camera (HAWC) and ultimately the Submillimeter And Far InfraRed Experiment (SAFIRE). IRC will enable trusted infrared astronomers around the world to easily access infrared astronomical instruments located in remote, inhospitable environments. The long-term focus is to develop an extensible framework to which new instruments can be added with relative ease. This will eventually be accomplished by implementing our own Instrument Control Markup Language (ICML) based on a custom Document Type Definition (DTD). ICML will be used to describe control capabilities, data streams, message formats, and communication mechanisms, as well as for online documentation and the association of housekeeping metadata with acquired images. Some of these aspects of instrument control will be reflected in Java graphical user interfaces, generated from the instrument descriptions. Other sections of the instrument description will be applied to data capture, as well as to other instrument subsystems.