Design of Embedded Systems (DES)

Info Autumn 2011

General aim of this course is to acquire basic knowledge about the systematic design of embedded systems and to obtain practical experience with model-based development of such systems. Relevant topics are, for instance, timing, real-time operating systems (and experience with Real-Time Linux), scheduling, interface of software with sensors and actuators, and model-based development of a small distributed real-time application.

• Teacher: Jozef Hooman, HG 02.633, tel 024 3652069 (Wednesday)
  Assistant: Harco Kuppens HG 02.620, tel 024 3652718

• Final Evaluation: 
  • Make an appointment for an oral examination in January 2012, possible dates: 18, 25 January, 1 February 2012.
  • At least three days before the oral examination, mail to Jozef Hooman:
    • Report on the Mars Rover (pdf or Word) according to these guidelines.
    • If changed since 21 December, Matlab model of the Mars Rover.

• Schedule oral exams in HG 02.633:
  • 18 January, 11:00 : Nick & Wouter
                       13:00 : György
                       14:00 : Alejandro & Adrian
  • 25 January, 10:00 : Louis
                       11:00 : Anne & Steffen
  • 1 February, 11:00 : Bard & Jille
                       12:00 : Boy & Bob
                       13:00 : Marco

• General outline: The course will consist of two main parts (in both parts, students work in groups of two):
  
• General introduction on embedded systems and scheduling theory. Analysis of small scheduling examples with the tool TIMES and practical experience by exercises with real-time linux (Xenomai).
• Development of a small real-time system. As a case study we build a (Lego) Mars Rover which has to accomplish a certain mission

LED wand clock controlled by Xenomai program

Small Lego NXT Rover

Lego NXT Mars Rover

• Matlab models:
  • first Matlab model of the Mars Rover (version 6)
  • more extensive model (version 7)
  • Matlab model of an experiment with the color sensor and the display
  • Matlab model of an experiment with sound via a "wav" file
• Presentations: Course 1 (7 Sept 2011), Course 2 (14 Sept 2011), Course 3 (28 Sept 2011), Course 4 (5 Oct 2011), Course 5 (12 Oct 2011), Course 7 (9 Nov 2011), Course 8 (23 Nov 2011), Course 9 (30 Nov 2011)
• NXT development: Embedded Coder Robot NXT (ecrobot), nxtOSEK
• Short informal information on Linux and Real-time Linux.
• Xenomai: see the Xenomai page of the Robot Lab web site
• Possible free UML tool: starUML.
• Tool for scheduling analysis: TIMES tool. A few notes:
• For non-pre-emptive schedulability analysis, disable 2-clock optimization:
  Options --> Configuration --> Verifier --> disable: "use 2 clock .."
  (Enable it for pre-emptive scheduling to improve performance.)
• Useful is the brief tutorial in the appendix of the paper TIMES: a Tool for Schedulability Analysis and Code Generation of Real-Time Systems.
• Rate Monotonic Analysis: Lui and Layland's paper Scheduling Algorithms for Multiprogramming in a Hard-Real-Time Environment. See also a paper on Rate-Monotonic Analysis for Real-Time Industrial Computing and information from the web, e.g., a short historical overview.
• Priority inversion: Explanation of priority inversion. To find out "What really happened on Mars", see mails of Mike Jones and Glen Reeves

• Perform the Xenomai exercises #1, #2, #3, #5, #6, #7, #8, #9, #10, #11
• Perform TIMES exercises 1, 2, and 3