On Mon, Jun 25, 2012 at 09:54:31AM +0200, Herman Bruyninckx wrote:
> > Could anyone here provide some pointers to good literature on the topic?
>
> As far as I know, such "good literature" is still badly missing...

I also do not know "good literature" about architecting control systems
in the context of robotics, but one can find some literature from the
outside of the robotics community.

To give you some examples: AADL (Architecture Analysis and Design
Language) and HOOD (Hierarchic Object-Oriented Design) method with its
HRT-HOOD (Hard Real-Time) extension seem to be popular in the avionics
community, but are not limited to the avionics domain. You can find
some basic information about them on the websites of ESA, which I think
is a good recommendation. Another "best practice" is the implicit task
synchronisation of the Simulink/Scicos that has been already discussed
on this mailing list.

In general, there is a lot of literature on "architecting" robot control
systems and you can find an overview in the Springer Handbook of Robotics,
Chapter 8: "Robotic Systems Architectures and Programming." However,
in my opinion there is still a huge gap between the general concepts (as
addressed by the "robotic system architectures") and their implementation
in the form of real-time control systems... The chapter does answer the
question of synchronizing the tasks of a control system, but it is worth
reading to have a wider view on the problem.

2012/6/25 Herman Bruyninckx <Herman [dot] Bruyninckx [..] ...>
>
> On Mon, 25 Jun 2012, Miguel Prada wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>>
>> I didn't want to highjack the thread opened by Luca (How to synchronise tasks?) with this
>> not-completely-related question. I've faced similar issues as him several times and solved them
>> in different ways (which I hope have improved with time ;)
>>
>> However, I think that I could use some reading on best practices for architecting such real time
>> control systems.
>>
>> Could anyone here provide some pointers to good literature on the topic?
>
>
> As far as I know, such "good literature" is still badly missing...
> The Wikibook of the BRICS project <http://www.roboticswikibook.org> is
> starting to do something about this situation. It's not yet "there",
> however.

It still looks like a promising effort. I'll certainly keep an eye on
it. Thanks for pointing it out.

>
>> Sorry if this doesn't quite fit the list topics, but I think it might come handy for more of us.
>
>
> I _is_ relevant, as far as I am concerned :-)

I never mean to say it was not relevant, but that this list might not
be the best place to ask for it ;)

Miguel.