Implementing robot controllers under real-time POSIX and Ada González Harbour, M.; Drake Moyano, J. M.; Aldea Rivas, M. ...
International Workshop on Real-time Ada Issues: Proceedings of the eighth international workshop on Real-Time Ada : Ravenscar, United Kingdom,
10/1997
Conference Proceeding
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In this paper we present our experience in the development of real-time controllers for special robots, designed to perform maintenance operations in nuclear power plants. The evolution of computer ...hardware and software technology has made the requirements of the embedded robot controllers to also evolve. In addition to the usual concurrent software and real-time constraints, today our robots require advanced features such as network communications, file systems, and graphical user interfaces. To meet all these requirements we not only need a reliable concurrent programming language such as Ada, but we also need to use services provided by real-time operating systems. In this paper we want to present our successful experience in the development of robot controllers using the Ada language and a POSIX real-time operating system.
We present a new modular, reconfigurable architecture for building and interacting with subsumption-based robot controllers. A set of modules - with embedded sensing, communication and processing ...capabilities - divide up the subsumption architecture into self-contained behavioral layers that subsume each other according to the way the modules are physically stacked. On-board indicators of the internal state of each module help in programming and understanding the behavior of the robot in real-time. This offers novices, in particular children, a new environment to learn about a powerful metaphor for programming robots and other interactive systems in a hands-on and exploratory manner. We will also discuss a prototype implementation of this architecture and the results of a preliminary user study using the prototype with a group of children.
The paper presents a formal approach to structuring multi-robot system controllers. It was used to structure the MRROC++ based controllers. The deduced structure is as such that on the one hand it is ...not too complex for implementation and on the other hand it does not limit the tasks that can be executed. Both coordinated and uncoordinated motions are taken into account. The use of diverse sensors is also considered. This approach enables the classification of motion generators and execution conditions giving further insight into the future performance of the designed system. The same approach can be used to elaborate different structures to the one used by MRROC++ based systems.
The article describes an operating environment for control systems. The environment contains the basic layers of a distributed operating system. The design of this operating environment is based on ...the requirements demanded by controllers which can be found in complex control systems. Due to the nature of real-time control systems, special attention has to be payed to an efficient implementation of the basic communication protocol and buffering method. The operating environment has been implemented and performance measurements have been carried out for several different strategies. The described operating environment which is used for robot control, will be embedded in a larger high level transputer operating system.< >
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