Re: [ANN] Player-Ada 2.0.3.0 released

["Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de>]

On Fri, 27 Oct 2006 15:29:54 +0200, Alex R. Mosteo wrote:

> Dmitry A. Kazakov wrote:
> 
>> On Fri, 27 Oct 2006 12:03:10 +0200, Alex R. Mosteo wrote:
>> 
>>> Dmitry A. Kazakov wrote:
>>> 
>>> (snip)
>>> 
>>>> If I correctly understood it is not embedded, the thingy is controlled
>>>> by a PC.
>>> 
>>> Well, no and yes. In our case, the Pioneer robots have an embedded board
>>> with PC/104 socket that allows to have a x86 platform running linux.
>> 
>> Is it role of being a sort of extension board, arithmetic booster, DSP
>> board etc as in PCs of early 90s?
> 
> I think it's a standard socket for industrial PCs that allows stacking of
> cards. A card can mount the CPU, another one the wireless, another some USB
> ports and so on...
> 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PC/104

Yes it is, but I actually meant the system architecture:

Sensors / Actuators
  ^
  |  DAC/ADC, I/Os etc
  y
Controller [closed, runs nobody knows what]
  ^
  |  RS232
  V
Extension board [open, runs Linux with an [Ada] application on]

Architectures like this were widely used in industrial automation 10 years
ago. History tends to repeat itself... (:-))

>>> Player
>>> connects to the hardware via RS232. But I suppose you refer to more
>>> exotic platforms?
>> 
>> Nothing specific. I am just wondering if there is an architecture that
>> could natively support Ada, down to actuators, sensors and real-time
>> control loops.
> 
> Do you know MARTE OS? It could be useful for such an architecture and is
> mostly Ada.
> http://marte.unican.es/

Interesting, thank you for the link.

> Our robots have a proprietary OS (ARCOS) in the other side of the RS232 for
> real-time control of the robot. I don't know much about it.
> 
>> [In industry actuators and sensors are connected via Ethernet (maybe
>> modified) or a field bus. The latter slowly dies out. RS232 is, well,
>> quite outdated.]
> 
> I don't have much experience with robots out of these ones, but USB is still
> second place to RS232: even if newer SICK models have USB, our models, GPS
> receivers, the robot microcontroller, the pan-tilt camera units, our
> lasers, all use RS232... may be they tricked us into buying obsolescent
> hardware ;)

Presently, it is no problem to bring a small embeddable 100MBaud Ethernet
switch on the board and connect sensors/actuators directly to the robot's
"LAN." The problem is that Ethernet/fieldbus-capable sensors/actuators are
quite expensive. Ada were an excellent candidate for implementation of a
middleware for "software wiring" of process variables in such a system.

-- 
Regards,
Dmitry A. Kazakov
http://www.dmitry-kazakov.de