Extended RT-Component Framework for RT-Middleware

Modular component-based robot systems require not only an infrastructure for component management, but also scalability as well as real-time properties. Robot Technology (RT)-Middleware is a software platform for such component-based robot systems. Each component in the RT-Middleware, so-called “RT-Component” supporting particular robot functions, is based on Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA). Unfortunately, the RTMiddleware lacks the mechanism for real-time control. In this paper, we extend the framework of the RT-Components to take care of timing constraints. We first enable tasks to have different periods within each RT-Component. We then modify the packet format of the General Inter-ORB Protocol (GIOP) to transfer the information of timing constraints over RT-Components. The performance evaluation on ART-Linux shows that the extended RT-Component framework improves the schedulability of distributed realtime tasks, without causing critical overheads in unmarsha...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2009
• Where: ISORC
• Authors: Hiroyuki Chishiro, Yuji Fujita, Akira Takeda, Yuta Kojima, Kenji Funaoka, Shinpei Kato, Nobuyuki Yamasaki
• Keywords: Common Object Request Broker Architecture, Component-based Robot Systems, ISORC 2009, Modular Component-based Robot, Software Engineering