Homogeneous Resource Configuration and Access for an Autonomous Robotic Vehicle

ERTS is a computer controlled golf car whose primary functional goal is autonomous real-world navigation. Its mission is to serve as a platform for collaborative research in diverse areas of cognitive robotics, human-computer interaction, among others, as well as basic research in embedded and real-time systems. This purpose demands a highly flexible platform on which it is relatively easy to configure and access resources ranging from vehicle components to sensor hardware. One avenue we are exploring toward this end is a uniform file-space interface, based in the Plan 9 operating system that originated at Bell Labs, and more recently, the work of Brown and Pisupati. They extended the approach for embedded and system-on-chip applications. We advocate synchronous design methods, where applicable, as this presents a more tractable model for students and researchers with higher experimental aims. The work described here establishes intrinsic support for globally synchronous, real-time interactions through the file-space abstraction. A small example of ERTS steering control is presented to illustrate the approach.