The Herzberg Extensible Adaptive Real-time Toolkit (HEART) is a collection of libraries and other software components developed at the Herzberg Astronomy and Astrophysics Research Centre (HAA) to control multiple types of Adaptive Optics (AO) systems. The HEART RTC design has two main components: the Hard Real-Time RTC (HRT), which includes all the time-critical high-speed processing tasks; and the Soft Real-Time RTC (SRT), which includes the nontime critical tasks such as optimizations, AO parameter updates, and diagnostics. HEART was used to create the REVOLT RTC (Research, Experiment, and Validation of Adaptive Optics with a Legacy Telescope), a single conjugate AO (SCAO) system, for the HAA’s 1.2-m telescope. This paper presents significant aspects of HEART that were successfully tested with REVOLT, either in the daytime testing or on-sky. Highlights include specialized functionality of the HRT such as uncontrolled mode cleanup, power spectra of the high-order vector, and pseudo-open loop feedback. Also highlighted are the recent design of the ELT Andes (ArmazoNes high Dispersion Echelle Spectrograph) SCAO RTC, which is a pixel based reconstructor. Core SRT operations such as reconstructor generation and optimization were also demonstrated. Presentation of results from these test runs make use of our HEART Analysis (HEART-ANA) package.
The Herzberg Extensible Adaptive optics Real-Time Toolkit (HEART) is a complete framework written in C and Python for building next-generation Adaptive Optics (AO) system real-time controllers, with the performance needed for extremely large telescopes. With numerous HEART-based RTCs now in their design or build phases, each with different AO algorithms, target hardware, and observatory requirements, continuous automated builds and tests are a cornerstone of our development effort. In this paper we describe the many levels of testing that we perform, from low-level unit tests of individual functions to more complex component and system-level tests that verify both numerical correctness and execution performance. Incorporating extensive testing into HEART since its inception has allowed us to continuously (and confidently) refactor and extend it to both meet the changing needs of local on-sky experiments, as well as those of the several major facility instruments that we are developing.
REVOLT is an experimental testbed that will be used to test novel AO components and AO techniques on sky at the 1.2m telescope of the Dominion Astrophysical Observatory. In its initial configuration that will be tested on-sky in spring 2022, REVOLT will have one deformable mirror, an ALPAO DM 277 and a Shack-Hartmann WFS based on a newly developed 512x512 pixel Near-Infrared Avalanche Photodiode array (Saphira). This testbed will be controlled at frame rates of up to 1 kHz by a Real-Time Controller (RTC) based on HEART1. HEART has gone through extensive testing and benchmarking, but this is the first time it will be tested on-sky. This paper will discuss customization of HEART required by REVOLT for the specified hardware, the issues found and lessons learned, the performance achieved during operations and the upgrades performed on HEART as a result.
Herzberg Extensible Adaptive Real-time Toolkit (HEART) is a collection of libraries and other software that can be used to create different types of Adaptive Optics (AO) systems. Pixels can be received from Laser Guide Star (LGS) Wavefront Sensors (WFSs), high-order Natural Guide Star (NGS) WFSs, On-Instrument WFSs (OIWFSs) that are located in the science instruments, and on-detector guide windows (ODGW) from science imagers. These inputs are processed in real-time by HEART to compute commands to configure the deformable mirrors (DMs) and the tip-tilt stage (TTS), as well as offloading information to selected mechanisms in the RTC, in the telescope and in the client instruments. This paper will explore the internal structure of HEART. In particular, the concept of “blocks”, which are reusable software units from which an RTC can be composed, how “pipes” are used to combine blocks in a meaningful manner and ultimately how those pipes can be used to realize many different types of real-time controllers (RTCs) such as SCAO (Single Conjugate AO), Multi-Conjugate AO (MCAO), Multi-Object AO (MOAO), and Ground Layer AO (GLAO). HEART is currently being implemented for use in NFIRAOS (Near Field Infra-Red AO System) for TMT, GNAO (Gemini North Adaptive Optics system), GIRMOS (Gemini Infrared Multi-Object Spectrograph), GPI2.0 (Gemini Planet Imager upgrade) and REVOLT (Research, Experiment and Validation of adaptive Optics with a Legacy Telescope).
This paper will discuss the Gemini Infrared Multi-Object Spectrograph (GIRMOS) with a focus on the design of its facility class Adaptive Optics (AO) Real Time Controller (RTC). The GIRMOS Adaptive Optics Real-Time Controller (GIRMOS RTC) will be developed using the Herzberg Extensible Adaptive Real-time Toolkit (HEART), a C/C++ software framework for constructing RTCs that targets general-purpose CPUs and standard networking hardware. The GIRMOS RTC just finished a successful pre-build phase where the custom parts of GIRMOS were designed and it was shown how the design incorporated HEART’s software modules. The GIRMOS RTC as a Multi-Object implementation of HEART will leverage a decade of design, modelling, and prototyping effort aimed to support the performance and configurability requirements of AO systems, with support for multiple client science instruments. This paper will discuss how HEART can be customized for a Multi-Object AO (MOAO) system.
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