Distributed application programmers rely on
middleware such as CORBA in order to handle the
complexity that arises from the distributed and
heterogeneous nature of the underlying computing
platform. CORBA, in particular, provides a media
streaming mechanism that can be used for media
streaming and for associating QoS requirements with
media streams. Despite defining the interfaces of the
media streaming mechanism, the corresponding
specification does not prescribe how QoS is enforced at
low-level by the middleware. This paper describes the
design and implementation of a QoS architecture, called
Quartz, which has been integrated with CORBA in order
to provide a framework that allows applications to
transfer real-time media in open systems. This framework
is employed to model and simulate a pattern recognition
mechanism for use in an automated manufacturing cell,
which is also described and analysed in this paper