A component supervisor for RT-Middleware using supervision trees

The 4C´s of software, computation, communication, configuration and coordination, indicate that the deployment and configuration of software components is an important part of using a component-based software system. This applies as much to robotics as anywhere else, where how to easily deploy the complex web of software components that make up a complete robot system is a well-known problem. We have developed an experimental tool for the deployment and configuration of components using RT-Middleware. It is based on the supervision tree concept. Components are organised into a hierarchy of sub-systems and managed in these groups. The use of a supervision tree ensures that dependencies between components are managed when errors occur, and that errors will propagate up the tree to a supervisor that is capable of handling them.