RealTime Operating Systems

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Real-TimeOperating Systems

• An Overview of RoBIOS

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Real-Time Operating Systems

• Correctness of the system depends on
• Correctness of the result
• Timely reception of the result, i.e. receive
  result before deadline
• Types of RTOSs
• Hard RTOS nuclear power plant, heart monitor,
  some robotics
• Soft RTOS some robotics

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RoBIOS Real-Time Robot Operating System

• Designed to control robotic platforms built at
  the University of Western Australia by Thomas
  Bräunl, et. al.
• Including
• Androids
• Hexapods
• Eyebot Vehicles

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RoBIOS Real-Time Robot Operating System
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RoBIOS Benefits to Programming Robots

• Has methods to interact with all on-board I/O
  devices
• No having to create drivers by hand!
• No having to worry about low-level details of
  hardware devices!
• Software libraries and cross compiler allow use
  of C programming language to develop programs

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RoBIOS Inputs and Outputs

• Inputs
• From the Environment
• From the Program/Programmer
• Outputs

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RoBIOS Inputs from the Environment

• Microphone
• Detect sounds
• Not high enough quality for voice recognition
• Color Camera
• Image detection
• Predefined functions to parse image
• Infrared Position Sensitive Detector
• Uses infrared beams to detect distances
• Keeps robot from running into things if used
  correctly

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RoBIOS Inputs from the Program/Programmer

• Soft Buttons
• Four buttons whose meanings change as the menu
  above them does
• RS232 Serial Port
• Used to download programs
• Can be used for wired communication
• Parallel Port
• Can be used to transmit images from camera back
  to a PC
• A/D Wireless Communication
• From bot-to-bot and supposedly from
  bot-to-computer and computer-to-bot

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RoBIOS Outputs

• Audio
• Can play simple sound files
• LCD Screen
• Great for testing, can be used to display text or
  black/white images
• Movement
• Servos and motors controlling camera movement and
  wheels/legs

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RoBIOS Other Useful Functions

• Multi-threading
• Older versions only allowed very limited and
  primitive multi-threading
• Recent new version allows for pre-emptive
  multi-threading
• Semaphores
• Aid in their creation and updating
• Timer
• Allows programmer to check internal time
• Interrupts
• Can enable and disable CPU interrupts