Real-time control of an autonomous mobile robot using the Harmony operating system

The authors outline some of the issues associated with the computing requirements for real-time control of a mobile robot. Specifically, they consider five important topics that an operating system for an autonomous mobile robot must address and how Harmony, a multiprocessing real-time operating system, tackles those issues. The five topics of discussion are: real-time computing, management of system complexity, system performance, system configuration, and debugging tools. Harmony is a flexible open system that meets the requirements for real-time computing. It is capable of servicing events generated by sensors within a specified time frame and can dynamically access computing resources to accommodate changing demands and adequate interrupt handling capability. The Harmony operating system reduces system complexity by using a multitasking abstraction along with message passing for intertask communications. The message passing paradigm represents an uncomplicated and uniform model for intertask communications