DESIGN OF DYNAMICALLY RECONFIGURABLE REAL-TIME SOFTWARE USING PORT-BASED OBJECTS

The port-based object is a new software abstraction for designing and implementing dynamically reconfigurable real-time software. it forms t he basis of a programming model that uses domain-specific elemental un its to provide specific, yet flexible, guidelines to control engineers for creating and integrating software components. We use a port-based object abstraction, based on combining the notion of an object with t he port-automaton algebraic model of concurrent processes. It is suppo rted by an implementation using domain-specific communication mechanis ms and templates that have been incorporated into the Chimera Real-Tim e Operating System and applied to several robotic applications. This p aper describes the port-based object abstraction, provides a detailed analysis of communication and synchronization based on distributed sha red memory, and describes a programming paradigm based on a framework process and code templates for quickly implementing applications.