Embedded control systems development with Giotto

Giotto is a principled, tool-supported design methodology for implementing embedded control systems on platforms of possibly distributed sensors, actu ators, CPUs, and networks. Giotto is based on the principle that time-trigg ered task invocations plus time-triggered mode switches can form the abstra ct essence of programming real-time control systems. Giotto consists of a p rogramming language with a formal semantics, and a retargetable compiler an d runtime library. Giotto supports the automation of control system design by strictly separating platform-independent functionality and timing concer ns from platform-dependent scheduling and communication issues. The time-tr iggered predictability of Giotto makes it particularly suitable for safety- critical applications with hard real-time constraints. We illustrate the pl atform-independence and time-triggered execution of Giotto by coordinating a heterogeneous flock of Intel x86 robots and Lego Mindstorms robots.