A computer architecture for intelligent machines

The Theory of Intelligent Machines proposes a hierarchical organization for the functions of an autonomous robot based on the Principle of Increasing Precision With Decreasing Intelligence. An analytic formulation of this theory using information-theoretic measures of uncertainty for each level of the intelligent machine has been developed in recent years. A computer architecture that implements the lower two levels of the intelligent machine is presented. The architecture supports an event-driven programming paradigm that is independent of the underlying computer architecture and operating system. Details of Execution Level controllers for motion and vision systems are addressed, as well as the Petri net transducer software used to implement Coordination Level functions. Extensions to UNIX and VxWorks operating systems which enable the development of a heterogeneous, distributed application are described. A case study illustrates how this computer architecture integrates real-time and higher-level control of manipulator and vision systems

Software systems for operation, control, and monitoring of the EBEX instrument

We present the hardware and software systems implementing autonomous operation, distributed real-time monitoring, and control for the EBEX instrument. EBEX is a NASA-funded balloon-borne microwave polarimeter designed for a 14 day Antarctic flight that circumnavigates the pole. To meet its science goals the EBEX instrument autonomously executes several tasks in parallel: it collects attitude data and maintains pointing control in order to adhere to an observing schedule; tunes and operates up to 1920 TES bolometers and 120 SQUID amplifiers controlled by as many as 30 embedded computers; coordinates and dispatches jobs across an onboard computer network to manage this detector readout system; logs over 3~GiB/hour of science and housekeeping data to an onboard disk storage array; responds to a variety of commands and exogenous events; and downlinks multiple heterogeneous data streams representing a selected subset of the total logged data. Most of the systems implementing these functions have been tested during a recent engineering flight of the payload, and have proven to meet the target requirements. The EBEX ground segment couples uplink and downlink hardware to a client-server software stack, enabling real-time monitoring and command responsibility to be distributed across the public internet or other standard computer networks. Using the emerging dirfile standard as a uniform intermediate data format, a variety of front end programs provide access to different components and views of the downlinked data products. This distributed architecture was demonstrated operating across multiple widely dispersed sites prior to and during the EBEX engineering flight.Comment: 11 pages, to appear in Proceedings of SPIE Astronomical Telescopes and Instrumentation 2010; adjusted metadata for arXiv submissio

A novel distributed architecture for UAV indoor navigation

Abstract In the last decade, different indoor flight navigation systems for small Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have been investigated, with a special focus on different configurations and on sensor technologies. The main idea of this paper is to propose a distributed Guidance Navigation and Control (GNC) system architecture, based on Robotic Operation System (ROS) for light weight UAV autonomous indoor flight. The proposed framework is shown to be more robust and flexible than common configurations. A flight controller and companion computer running ROS for control and navigation are also included in the section. Both hardware and software diagrams are given to show the complete architecture. Further works will be based on the experimental validation of the proposed configuration by indoor flight tests

An application of microservices architecture pattern to create a modular computer numerical control system

Currently, the most common approach to Computer Numerical Control (CNC) system design is a monolithic architecture. However, the introduction of the concept of Cyber-Physical Production Systems (CPPS) requires a paradigm shift in the design of control systems. This paper suggests a new approach to developing modular industrial equipment using a microservices architecture pattern. Microservices architecture features are addressed, as well as advantages and disadvantages. A heterogeneous computer network, where nodes communicate via a message queue, is proposed as a basis for the computer numerical control system. Fault tolerance is provided by modules full autonomy and reliable messaging. Furthermore, NoSQL database, guaranteeing high data accessibility and increased data access speed, is applied. An apparatus for selective photopolymer laser curing of free-form surfaces is considered as an example. Common setup structure, as well as main hardware and software modules, are described. Moreover, a distributed network latency simulation was carried out to prove the viability of the proposed microservices architecture

UAV payload and mission control hardware/software architecture

This paper presents an embedded hardware/software architecture specially designed to be applied on mini/micro Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV). An UAV is low-cost non-piloted airplane designed to operate in D-cube (Dangerous-Dirty-Dull) situations [8]. Many types of UAVs exist today; however with the advent of UAV's civil applications, the class of mini/micro UAVs is emerging as a valid option in a commercial scenario. This type of UAV shares limitations with most computer embedded systems: limited space, limited power resources, increasing computation requirements, complexity of the applications, time to market requirements, etc. UAVs are automatically piloted by an embedded system named “Flight Control System”. Many of those systems are commercially available today, however no commercial system exists nowadays that provides support to the actual mission that the UAV should perform. This paper introduces a hardware/software architecture specially designed to operate as a flexible payload and mission controller in a mini/micro UAV. Given that the missions UAVs can carry on justify their existence, we believe that specific payload and mission controller s for UAV should be developed. Our architectonic proposal for them orbits around four key elements: a LAN based distributed and scalable hardware architecture, a service/subscription based software architecture and an abstraction communication layer.Peer Reviewe

From the Queue to the Quality of Service Policy: A Middleware Implementation

The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-02481-8_61Quality of service policies in communications is one of the current trends in distributed systems based on middleware technology. To implement the QoS policies it is necessary to define some common parameters. The aim of the QoS policies is to optimize the user defined QoS parameters. This article describes how to obtain the common QoS parameters using message queues for the communications and control components of communication. The paper introduces the Queue-based Quality of Service Cycle concept for each middleware component. The QoS parameters are obtained directly from the queue parameters, and Quality of Service Policies controls directly the message queues to obtain the user-defined parameters values.The middleware architecture described in this article is a part of the coordinated project SIDIRELI: Distributed Systems with Limited Resources. Control Kernel and Coordination. Education and Science Department, Spanish Government. CICYT: MICINN: DPI2008-06737-C02-01/02.Poza-Lujan, J.; Posadas-Yagüe, J.; Simó Ten, JE. (2009). From the Queue to the Quality of Service Policy: A Middleware Implementation. En Distributed Computing, Artificial Intelligence, Bioinformatics, Soft Computing, and Ambient Assisted Living. Springer Verlag (Germany). 432-437. doi:10.1007/978-3-642-02481-8_61S432437Aurrecoechea, C., Campbell, A.T., Hauw, L.: A Survey of QoS Architectures. Multimedia Systems Journal, Special Issue on QoS Architecture 6(3), 138–151 (1998)OMG. Data Distribution Service for Real-Time Systems, v1.1. Document formal/2005-12-04 (December 2005)Botts, M., Percivall, G., Reed, C., Davidson, J.: OGC®. Sensor Web Enablement: Overview And High Level Architecture, OpenGIS Consortium Inc (2006)Poza, J.L., Posadas, J.I., Simó, J.E.: QoS-based middleware architecture for distributed control systems. In: International Symposium on Distributed Computing and Artificial Intelligence, Salamanca (2008)Vogel, A., Kerherve, B., von Bochmann, G., Gecsei, J.: Distributed Multi-media and QoS: A Survey 2(2), 10–19 (1995)Crawley, E., Nair, R., Rajagopalan, B.: RFC 2386: A Framework for QoS-based Routing in the Internet, pp. 1–37, XP002219363 (August 1998)ITU-T Recommendation E.800 (0894). Terms and Definitions Related to Quality of Service and Network Performance Including Dependability (1994)Stuck, B.W., Arthurs, E.: A Computer & Communications Network Performance Analysis Primer. Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs (1984)Jain, R.: The art of Computer Systems Performance Analysis. John Wiley & Sons Inc., New york (1991)Coulouris, G., Dollimore, J., Kindberg, T.: Distributed Systems. Concepts and Design, 3rd edn. Addison Wesley, Madrid (2001)Jung, J.-l.: Quality of Service in Telecommunications Part II: Translation of QoS Pa-rameters into ATM Performance Parameters in B-ISDN. IEEE Comm. Mag., pp. 112–117 (August 1996)Wohlstadter, E., Tai, S., Mikalsen, T., Rouvellou, I., Devanbu, P.: GlueQoS: Middleware to Sweeten Quality-of-Service Policy Interactions. In: ICSE, 26th International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE 2004) (2004

Systems integration using Siemens\u27 PC based automation technology

Manufacturing Systems Integration is the progressive linking and combination of the various components of the system to merge their functional and technical characteristics into a comprehensive interoperable unit. It requires one to work with different hardware and software. There are a number of vendors providing a large number of products. Integrating these varieties of products provides a greater value than the sum of the value provided by the individual products. What hinders the effective integration of these components is the diversity in the design and the use of these products. Systems Integration is eased by well-established standards in data communication, programming languages, application development environments and computer operating systems. Many vendors have attempted to come up with standards that are relatively open. However, when one has to integrate data among multiple vendors\u27 architecture, a new set of challenges emerge. The Siemens\u27 PC-based automation technology is an emerging technology that appears to provide robust architecture for integrating all elements of the manufacturing environment. Applications ranging from simple control to distributed control and full-fledged Manufacturing Execution Systems can be developed using Siemens\u27 architecture. The primary focus of this applied research work is to develop a Manufacturing Execution System to control a flexible manufacturing system using Siemens PC-based automation technology. This technology is implemented in a Flexible Manufacturing cell named the CAMCELL. The CAMCELL consists of two CNC machining centers, assembly robots, and a vision system, all of which are interlinked by a material handling system. The software architecture of the CAMCELL is based on NIST\u27s five level hierarchy, discussed briefly in the report. Specifically it contains functional modules for order entry, scheduling and routing. In addition to these functional modules, there are various support modules such as order entry module, scheduler, router etc, two of which named the Inquire and the Pallet Controller that are implemented in this study. Siemens\u27 Step 7 and WTNCC software are used for the control and monitoring of the cell

Handling Policy Conflicts in Call Control

Policies are becoming increasingly important in modern computer systems as a mechanism for end users and organisations to exhibit a level of control over software. Policies have long been established as an effective mechanism for enabling appropriate access control over resources, and for enforcing security considerations. However they are now becoming valued as a more general management mechanism for large-scale heterogeneous systems, including those exhibiting adaptive or autonomic behaviour. In the telecommunications domain, features have been widely used to provide users with (limited) control over calls. However, features have the disadvantage that they are low-level and implementation-oriented in nature. Furthermore, apart from limited parameterisation of some features, they tend to be very inflexible. Policies, in contrast, have the potential to be much higher-level, goaloriented, and very flexible. This paper presents an architecture and its realisation for distributed and hierarchical policies within the telecommunications domain. The work deals with the important issue of policy conflict – the analogy of feature interaction

A distributed architecture for unmanned aerial systems based on publish/subscribe messaging and simultaneous localisation and mapping (SLAM) testbed

A dissertation submitted in fulfilment for the degree of Master of Science. School of Computational and Applied Mathematics, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa, November 2017The increased capabilities and lower cost of Micro Aerial Vehicles (MAVs) unveil big opportunities for a rapidly growing number of civilian and commercial applications. Some missions require direct control using a receiver in a point-to-point connection, involving one or very few MAVs. An alternative class of mission is remotely controlled, with the control of the drone automated to a certain extent using mission planning software and autopilot systems. For most emerging missions, there is a need for more autonomous, cooperative control of MAVs, as well as more complex data processing from sensors like cameras and laser scanners. In the last decade, this has given rise to an extensive research from both academia and industry. This research direction applies robotics and computer vision concepts to Unmanned Aerial Systems (UASs). However, UASs are often designed for specific hardware and software, thus providing limited integration, interoperability and re-usability across different missions. In addition, there are numerous open issues related to UAS command, control and communication(C3), and multi-MAVs. We argue and elaborate throughout this dissertation that some of the recent standardbased publish/subscribe communication protocols can solve many of these challenges and meet the non-functional requirements of MAV robotics applications. This dissertation assesses the MQTT, DDS and TCPROS protocols in a distributed architecture of a UAS control system and Ground Control Station software. While TCPROS has been the leading robotics communication transport for ROS applications, MQTT and DDS are lightweight enough to be used for data exchange between distributed systems of aerial robots. Furthermore, MQTT and DDS are based on industry standards to foster communication interoperability of “things”. Both protocols have been extensively presented to address many of today’s needs related to networks based on the internet of things (IoT). For example, MQTT has been used to exchange data with space probes, whereas DDS was employed for aerospace defence and applications of smart cities. We designed and implemented a distributed UAS architecture based on each publish/subscribe protocol TCPROS, MQTT and DDS. The proposed communication systems were tested with a vision-based Simultaneous Localisation and Mapping (SLAM) system involving three Parrot AR Drone2 MAVs. Within the context of this study, MQTT and DDS messaging frameworks serve the purpose of abstracting UAS complexity and heterogeneity. Additionally, these protocols are expected to provide low-latency communication and scale up to meet the requirements of real-time remote sensing applications. The most important contribution of this work is the implementation of a complete distributed communication architecture for multi-MAVs. Furthermore, we assess the viability of this architecture and benchmark the performance of the protocols in relation to an autonomous quadcopter navigation testbed composed of a SLAM algorithm, an extended Kalman filter and a PID controller.XL201