Integrating Mode Automata Control Models in SoC Co-Design for Dynamically Reconfigurable FPGAs

International audienceThe number of integrated transistors that can be contained on a chip are increasing at an exponential rate, along with rise in targeted sophisticated applications. Thus the design of Systems-on-Chip (SoC) is becoming more and more complex. Hence there is a critical need to find new seamless methodologies and tools to handle the SoC co-design aspects. This paper presents a novel approach for expressing system adaptivity and reconfigurability in Gaspard, a SoC co-design framework, with special focus on partially dynamically reconfigurable FPGAs. The framework is compliant with UML MARTE profile proposed by Object Management Group, for modeling and analysis of realtime embedded systems. The overall objective is to carry out system modeling at a high abstraction level expressed in UML; and afterwards, transform these high level models into detailed enriched lower level models in order to automatically generate the necessary code for final FPGA synthesi

Rational physical agent reasoning beyond logic

The paper addresses the problem of defining a theoretical physical agent framework that satisfies practical requirements of programmability by non-programmer engineers and at the same time permitting fast realtime operation of agents on digital computer networks. The objective of the new framework is to enable the satisfaction of performance requirements on autonomous vehicles and robots in space exploration, deep underwater exploration, defense reconnaissance, automated manufacturing and household automation

System Design, Motion Modelling and Planning for a Recon figurable Wheeled Mobile Robot

Over the past ve decades the use of mobile robotic rovers to perform in-situ scienti c investigations on the surfaces of the Moon and Mars has been tremendously in uential in shaping our understanding of these extraterrestrial environments. As robotic missions have evolved there has been a greater desire to explore more unstructured terrain. This has exposed mobility limitations with conventional rover designs such as getting stuck in soft soil or simply not being able to access rugged terrain. Increased mobility and terrain traversability are key requirements when considering designs for next generation planetary rovers. Coupled with these requirements is the need to autonomously navigate unstructured terrain by taking full advantage of increased mobility. To address these issues, a high degree-of-freedom recon gurable platform that is capable of energy intensive legged locomotion in obstacle-rich terrain as well as wheeled locomotion in benign terrain is proposed. The complexities of the planning task that considers the high degree-of-freedom state space of this platform are considerable. A variant of asymptotically optimal sampling-based planners that exploits the presence of dominant sub-spaces within a recon gurable mobile robot's kinematic structure is proposed to increase path quality and ensure platform safety. The contributions of this thesis include: the design and implementation of a highly mobile planetary analogue rover; motion modelling of the platform to enable novel locomotion modes, along with experimental validation of each of these capabilities; the sampling-based HBFMT* planner that hierarchically considers sub-spaces to better guide search of the complete state space; and experimental validation of the planner with the physical platform that demonstrates how the planner exploits the robot's capabilities to uidly transition between various physical geometric con gurations and wheeled/legged locomotion modes

Design and application of reconfigurable circuits and systems

Open Acces

Hardware implementation of intelligent systems

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