A Distributed Control System for the CMU Rover

Abstract

This papa describes a distributed software control structure developed for the C/1/U Rover. an advanced mobile robot equipped with a variety of semors. Fxpert modules are used to comro/ the operation of the sensors and actuators. interpret sen sol)' and feedback data. build an intema/model of the rob ot's environme11t. de1 •ise strategies to accomplish proposed tasks and execute these strategies. Fach expert module is composed of a master process and a sla1•e proce ss. where the master process controls the scheduling and working of the slave proces s. Communication among expert modules occurs asynchronously over a blackboard structure. lnfonnation specific to the execution of a gi1 • cn task is provided through a control plan The system is distributed over a network of processors. Realtime operating system kernels local to each processor and an interprocess message communication mechanism ensure transparency of the underlying network structure. The various parts of the system are presented in this paper and future work to be perfonned is mentioned.