Abstract
This paper describes specific constraints of vision systems that are dedicated to be embedded in mobile robots. If PC-based hardware architecture is convenient in this field because of its versatility, flexibility, performance, and cost, current real-time operating systems are not completely adapted to long processing with varying duration, and it is often necessary to oversize the system to guarantee fail-safe functioning. Also, interactions with other robotic tasks having more priority are difficult to handle. To answer this problem, we have developed a dynamically reconfigurable vision processing system, based on the innovative features of Cléopatre real-time applicative layer concerning scheduling and fault tolerance. This framework allows to define emergency and optional tasks to ensure a minimal quality of service for the other subsystems of the robot, while allowing to adapt dynamically vision processing chain to an exceptional overlasting vision process or processor overload. Thus, it allows a better cohabitation of several subsystems in a single hardware, and to develop less expensive but safe systems, as they will be designed for the regular case and not rare exceptional ones. Finally, it brings a new way to think and develop vision systems, with pairs of complementary operators.
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This work was supported by the French research office (No. 01 K 0742) under the Cléopatre project.
Aymeric De Cabrol graduated from ESME Sudria Engineering School in Paris, France, in 2001. He received his M. Sc. degree in automatic control from ENSAE Sup’aéro in Toulouse, France, in 2002 and the Ph.D. degree from the Paris 13 University, France, in 2005. He is currently associate researcher at the Laboratory of Transport and Processing of Information, L2TI.
His research interest includes vision processing for mobile robotics.
Thibault Garcia received his M.Sc. degree in distributed computing, then the Ph.D. degree from University of Nantes, France, respectively in 2001 and 2005. He is currently at the head of Revaweb company.
His research interests include real-time operating system and scheduling issue.
Patrick Bonnin received his agrégation in physics in 1985, and his M. Sc. degree in physical measurement in remote sensing and the Ph.D. degree from University Paris 7, France, respectively in 1986 and 1991. Then, he became an associate professor in 1992, and professor in 2000. He is currently professor at ISTY School of Engineering of the University of Versailles, France.
His research interests include real-time robotic vision, especially for legged robots.
Maryline Chetto received her M. Sc. degree in automatic control, the Ph.D. degree in computer science, and the HDR from University of Nantes, respectively in 1982, 1984, and 1993. She is currently professor at the University of Nantes, France.
Her research is conducted in the Group of Real-time Systems of the Research Institute of Communications and Cybernetics (IRRCyN). She has been the leader of a French national R&D project, namely Cléopatre, supported by the French government, which aims to provide free open source real-time solutions. She has published more than 60 journal articles and conference papers in the area of real-time operating systems.
Her research interests include scheduling and fault-tolerance in real-time systems.
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De Cabrol, A., Garcia, T., Bonnin, P. et al. A concept of dynamically reconfigurable real-time vision system for autonomous mobile robotics. Int. J. Autom. Comput. 5, 174–184 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11633-008-0174-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11633-008-0174-0