RRTLAN - A real-time robot communication protocol stack with multi threading option

This paper presents the controlling and communication system structure of a new rescue robot concept. This robot is built to get a fast overview in search and rescues missions. A lot of disaster scenarios in the past have shown, that it is important to get an overview as fast as possible over the debacle. This is also necessary to plan and coordinate the action force like fire fighters or first-aid suppliers. The controlling system is separated in two levels, the high level control and the low level control. One of the important tasks, in each control system, is the communication between the single control units. Ethernet is a general communication standard with a high throughput in a computer network. The possibility of collisions in and the switching mechanism in modern LAN, causes undefined delays. This paper introduces a new communication protocol, called RRTLAN, with a high performance, flexibility and reliability. RRTLAN also needs less microcontroller resources, so it can be implemented even in tiny microcontroller with little memory.