System Integration

1
System Integration

• Mario Bollini
• December 5, 2008

2
Summary

• Design Objectives
• Design Selection
• Initial Implementation Plan
• Current Implementation
• Status of Current Implementation
• Assessment of Current Implementation

3
Design Objectives

• Modular system for robot task execution
• Allow multiple groups to work in parallel
  effectively
• Isolate module failures
• Sustainable and debuggable system
• Provide logging of data and output
• Allow for simulation of absent modules

4
Design Selections

• Two different designs
• Process-based modules communicating with an IPC
  client
• Integrated software system with modularized
  language objects to perform different tasks.

5
Process Based Design

• Met the design criteria best
• Allows for extremely modular development
• Communication through messages enforces
  abstraction boundaries
• Lightweight Communication and Marshalling (LCM)
  system was available to meet our needs

6
Initial Implementation Plan
Camera
Roomba
Arm
Roomba Abstraction
Arm Abstraction
Object Recognition
LCM
Visual Servoing
Navigation
Onboard Robot Planner
Network Communication
7
Current Implementation
Camera
Roomba
Arm
Object Recognition
robot.c
arm.c
LCM
ServoingFSMHandler
NavigationFSMHandler
Visual Servoing
Navigation
Planner
Scheduler
8
Status of Current Implementation

• Planner correctly delegates tasks between modules
• Tested each module to module state and control
  transition
• Provides high level functionality for all
  specified robot-plant-scheduler interactions
• Visiting plants
• Watering, counting, and picking
• Yielding tasks to other robots

9
Assessment of Current Implementation

• Successes
• The system allowed for very paralleled
  development of modules
• Module failures do not bring the whole system
  down
• From a high level integration standpoint, the
  integration is complete

10
Assessment of Current Implementation

• Failures
• LCM does not give receipt of messages, which
  makes delegating tasks via an FSM clunky (since
  the user has to do the message receipt
  verification)
• The system did not force a pattern of spiral
  development
• Modularity kept components separate for too long

11
Remarks

• Setting up the system infrastructure (low level
  hardware interactions and the message passing
  system) took way too long.
• The simulation and logging features of LCM were
  not used effectively.