Real-Time ROS Extension on Transparent CPU/GPU Coordination Mechanism

Abstract

Robot Operating System (ROS) promotes fault isolation, faster development, modularity, and core reusability and is therefore widely studied and used as the de facto standard for autonomous driving systems. Graphics processing units (GPUs) also facilitate high-performance computing and are therefore used for autonomous driving. As the requirements for real-time processing increase, methods for satisfying real-time constraints for ROS and GPUs are being developed. Unfortunately, scheduling algorithms specifying ROS's transportation (publish/subscribe) model, which can have execution order restrictions, are not being investigated, leading to the introduction of waiting time and degrading the responsiveness of the entire system. Furthermore, GPU tasks on ROS are also affected by the ROS transportation model, because central processing unit (CPU) time is occupied when GPU functions are launched. This paper proposes a loadable kernel module framework, called real-time ROS extension on transparent CPU/GPU coordination mechanism (ROSCH-G), for scheduling ROS in a heterogeneous environment without modifying the OS kernel and device drivers and then evaluates it experimentally. ROSCH-G provides a scheduling algorithm that considers ROS's execution order restrictions and a CPU/GPU coordination mechanism. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm reduces the deadline miss rate and, compared with previous studies, makes effective use of the benefits of parallel processing. In addition, the results for the coordination mechanism demonstrate that ROSCH-G can schedule multiple GPU applications successfully.