Rapid Prototyping Environment Research Articles

Guest Editor's Introduction: Rapid System Prototyping

The March, April, and May 2007 issues of IEEE Distributed Systems Online feature revised versions of the best papers presented at the 17th International IEEE Workshop on Rapid System Prototyping (RSP 06). These articles were selected by reviewers from a large selection of excellent submissions. "Gaining Insight into Executable Models during Runtime: Architecture and Mappings" by Philipp Graf and Klaus D. Muller-Glaser appears in the March issue. The article describes an extension to a model-based development approach that provides an architecture for debugging models that execute on target systems or in dedicated rapid-prototyping environments.

Gaining Insight into Executable Models during Runtime: Architecture and Mappings

An extension to a seamless, model-based development approach provides an architecture for debugging models that execute on target systems or in dedicated rapid-prototyping environments. During development, the ever-increasing design complexity of embedded systems frequently comes into conflict with cost, time-to-market, and quality. This complexity results from increasing functionality, the expanding design space, the distribution of functionality to distributed control units, the optimization of power dissipation, and performance requirements. As complexity increases, the development focus shifts from electronic and pure control-based systems toward software-based systems. The embedded-software development community is increasingly accepting the object-oriented paradigm, and a growing number of graphical tools for computer-aided systems and software engineering (CASE) support it. Relevant notations include the Unified Modeling Language (UML), statecharts, and signalflow-based modeling. In this article, we briefly describe our development process for specifying software targeted at embedded systems according to different modeling domains and transforming it to an executable binary that's appropriate for rapid prototyping

VLAM‐G: Interactive Data Driven Workflow Engine for Grid‐Enabled Resources

Grid brings the power of many computers to scientists. However, the development of Grid‐enabled applications requires knowledge about Grid infrastructure and low‐level API to Grid services. In turn, workflow management systems provide a high‐level environment for rapid prototyping of experimental computing systems. Coupling Grid and workflow paradigms is important for the scientific community: it makes the power of the Grid easily available to the end user. The paradigm of data driven workflow execution is one of the ways to enable distributed workflow on the Grid. The work presented in this paper is carried out in the context of the Virtual Laboratory for e‐Science project. We present the VLAM‐G workflow management system and its core component: the Run‐Time System (RTS). The RTS is a dataflow driven workflow engine which utilizes Grid resources, hiding the complexity of the Grid from a scientist. Special attention is paid to the concept of dataflow and direct data streaming between distributed workflow components. We present the architecture and components of the RTS, describe the features of VLAM‐G workflow execution, and evaluate the system by performance measurements and a real life use case.

Resource efficiency of the GigaNetIC chip multiprocessor architecture

In this article, we present the prototypical implementation of the scalable GigaNetIC chip multiprocessor architecture. We use an FPGA-based rapid prototyping system to verify the functionality of our architecture in a network application scenario before fabricating the ASIC in a modern CMOS standard cell technology. The rapid prototyping environment gives us the opportunity to test our multiprocessor architecture with Ethernet-based data streams in a real network scenario. Our system concept is based on a massively parallel processor structure. Due to its regularity, our architecture can be easily scaled to accommodate a wide range of packet processing applications with various performance and throughput requirements at high reliability. Furthermore, the composition based on predefined building blocks guarantees fast design cycles and simplifies system verification. We present standard cell synthesis results as well as a performance analysis for a firewall application with various couplings of hardware accelerators. Finally, we compare implementations of our architecture with state-of-the-art desktop CPUs. We use simple, general-purpose applications as well as the introduced packet processing tasks to determine the performance capabilities and the resource efficiency of the GigaNetIC architecture. We show that, if supported by the application, parallelism offers more opportunities than increasing clock frequencies.

A flexible environment for rapid prototyping and analysis of distributed real-time safety-critical systems

Currently, there is a plethora of low-cost commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) hardware available for implementing control systems. These range from devices with fairly low intelligence, e.g. smart sensors and actuators, to dedicated controllers such as PowerPC, programmable logic controllers (PLCs) and PC-based boards to dedicated systems-on-a-chip (SoC) ASICS and FPGAs. When considering the construction of complex distributed systems, e.g. for a ship, aircraft, car, train, process plant, the ability to rapidly integrate a variety of devices from different manufacturers is essential. A problem, however, is that manufacturers prefer to supply proprietary tools for programming their products. As a consequence of this lack of ‘openness’, rapid prototyping and development of distributed systems is extremely difficult and costly for a systems integrator. Great opportunities thus exist to produce high-performance, dependable distributed systems. However, the key element that is missing is software tool support for systems integration. The objective of the Flexible Control Systems Development and Integration Environment for Control Systems (FLEXICON) project IST-2001-37269 is to solve these problems for industry and reduce development and implementation costs for distributed control systems by providing an integrated suite of tools to support all the development life-cycle of the system. Work within the Rolls-Royce supported University Technology Centre (UTC) is investigating rapid prototyping of controllers for aero-engines, unmanned aerial vehicles and ships. This paper describes the use of the developed co-simulation environment for a high-speed merchant vessel propulsion system application.

Prototyping SOS Meta-theory in Maude

We present a prototype implementation of SOS meta-theory in the Maude term rewriting language. The prototype defines the basic concepts of SOS meta-theory (e.g., transition formulae, deduction rules and transition system specifications) in Maude. Besides the basic definitions, we implement methods for checking the premises of some SOS meta-theorems (e.g., GSOS congruence meta-theorem) in this framework. Furthermore, we define a generic strategy for animating programs and models for semantic specifications in our meta-language. The general goal of this line of research is to develop a general-purpose tool that assists language designers by checking useful properties about the language under definition and by providing a rapid prototyping environment for scrutinizing the actual behavior of programs according to the defined semantics.

Development and road tests of an ABS control system

Dedicated respectfully to the memory of Enrico Suraci In this paper is described the complete developement of a prototype ABS system, from the early phases of the Specification and Design, until the Road Tests. The Design of the ABS algorithms have been done in Matlab/SimulinkTM and tested by Software In the Loop (SIL) co-simulation in Matlab/SimulinkTM environment, too. For the Road tests a Rapid Control Prototyping (RCP) environment has been designed and developed. Some meaningful results of the Road tests are shown.

Framework for FPGA-based discrete biorthogonal wavelet transforms implementation

The discrete wavelet transform has taken its place at the forefront of research for the development of signal and image processing applications. These wavelet-based approaches have outperformed existing strategies in many areas including telecommunication, numerical analysis and, most notably, image/video compression. The authors present an investigation into the design and implementation of 1-D and 2-D discrete biorthogonal wavelet transforms (DBWTs) using a field programmable gate array (FPGA)-based rapid prototyping environment. The proposed architectures for DBWTs are scalable, modular and have less area and time complexity when compared with existing structures. FPGA implementation results based on a Xilinx Virtex-2000E device have shown that the proposed system provides an efficient solution for the processing of DBWTs in real-time.

Development of open source software for computer-assisted intervention systems

We are developing open source software for computer assisted intervention systems. Our primary experience has been with medical robots, but the concepts (and software) apply to many physical devices that interact with the real world. The real-time performance requirements permeate all levels of our software, including common tools (such as logging, class and object registers), vectors, matrices and transformations. Our software libraries are written in C++, but are also accessible from Python, which provides a convenient environment for rapid prototyping and interactive testing. The real-time support includes a device (hardware) interface and a task library. Device-specific modules such as robot servo control and trajectory generation can be provided by tasks or by external devices. Ultimately, we intend to provide a framework that supports extension via dynamically loaded plug-in modules. Our development process utilizes a multitude of open source tools, including CVS, CMake, Swig, CppUnit, Dart, CVSTrac, Doxygen and LaTeX. These tools help to ensure compliance with our software development procedure.

CoreMap: a rapid prototyping environment for distributed reconfigurable systems

We present two methods for solving the temporal partitioning problem. The first one is an enhancement of the well-known list scheduling method. The enhancement uses the so-called configuration switching to minimise the number of partitions. The second method first uses a three-dimensional spectral placement to position the modules in a three-dimensional vector space. The partitioning is done by picking components along the time-axis in increasing order of the time-coordinates. The Kernighan-Lin (KL) (Kernighan and Lin, 1970; Fiduccia and Mattheyses, 1982; Lengauer, 1990) algorithm with a modified gain function adapted to our need is then used to move the nodes of the graph from one partition to the other to insure an unidirectional partition.

Cyberbotics Ltd. Webots™: Professional Mobile Robot Simulation

Cyberbotics Ltd. develops Webots™, a mobile robotics simulation software that provides you with a rapid prototyping environment for modelling, programming and simulating mobile robots. The provided robot libraries enable you to transfer your control programs to several commercially available real mobile robots. Webots™ lets you define and modify a complete mobile robotics setup, even several different robots sharing the same environment. For each object, you can define a number of properties, such as shape, color, texture, mass, friction, etc. You can equip each robot with a large number of available sensors and actuators. You can program these robots using your favorite development environment, simulate them and optionally transfer the resulting programs onto your real robots. Webots™ has been developed in collaboration with the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, thoroughly tested, well documented and continuously maintained for over 7 years. It is now the main commercial product available from Cyberbotics Ltd.

KISS for STRAP: user extensions for a protein alignment editor.

The Structural Alignment Program STRAP is a comfortable comprehensive editor and analyzing tool for protein alignments. A wide range of functions related to protein sequences and protein structures are accessible with an intuitive graphical interface. Recent features include mapping of mutations and polymorphisms onto structures and production of high quality figures for publication. Here we address the general problem of multi-purpose program packages to keep up with the rapid development of bioinformatical methods and the demand for specific program functions. STRAP was remade implementing a novel design which aims at Keeping Interfaces in STRAP Simple (KISS). KISS renders STRAP extendable to bio-scientists as well as to bio-informaticians. Scientists with basic computer skills are capable of implementing statistical methods or embedding existing bioinformatical tools in STRAP themselves. For bio-informaticians STRAP may serve as an environment for rapid prototyping and testing of complex algorithms such as automatic alignment algorithms or phylogenetic methods. Further, STRAP can be applied as an interactive web applet to present data related to a particular protein family and as a teaching tool. JAVA-1.4 or higher. http://www.charite.de/bioinf/strap/

5.5.3 Enabling Systems Architecture Tradeoffs Using a Systems Integration Framework

AbstractSystems integration of large information enterprises involves integrating multiple heterogeneous database systems, client‐server platforms, web application technologies, and data warehousing solutions. Lockheed Martin Management and Data Systems (M&DS) is involved in systems integration for state, local, and federal government customers. We are currently developing a Systems Integration Framework (SIF) to assist in the architecture tradeoff and selection for large information enterprises. A SIF is an environment, which will assist in the rapid prototyping and testing of architectures, and specific instantiations of the architectures using commercial tools and platforms. Over the last four years we have developed and tested architectures for client‐server applications, web applications, mobile computing applications, data warehouses, and data mining applications. Performance metrics have been collected for web application servers and client‐server applications. This paper will describe how we utilized the SIF as a rapid prototyping and tradeoff environment to support systems engineering for state government customers in domains such as law enforcement, criminal justice, and airline operations.

Web-based UMLS concept retrieval by automatic text scanning: a comparison of two methods

The Web is increasingly the medium of choice for multi-user application program delivery. Yet selection of an appropriate programming environment for rapid prototyping, code portability, and maintainability remain issues. We summarize our experience on the conversion of a LISP Web application, Search/SR to a new, functionally identical application, Search/SR-ASP using a relational database and active server pages (ASP) technology. Our results indicate that provision of easy access to database engines and external objects is almost essential for a development environment to be considered viable for rapid and robust application delivery. While LISP itself is a robust language, its use in Web applications may be hard to justify given that current vendor implementations do not provide such functionality. Alternative, currently available scripting environments for Web development appear to have most of LISP's advantages and few of its disadvantages.

An integrated environment for rapid prototyping of DSP Algorithms using matlab and Texas instruments’ TMS320C30

This paper presents the implementation of a rapid prototyping system, which involves the design of DSP algorithms using matlab Simulink blocksets, automated code generation, and downloading of executable code to the Texas Instruments’ Evaluation Module (TMS320C30-EVM). Various DSP algorithms were implemented and benchmarked in this system. It demonstrates that the matlab Simulink development system integrated with the TMS320C30-EVM provides a useful development tool for design verification of DSP algorithms. Performance results show that code developed using the rapid prototyping system is highly efficient and the development cycle time is greatly reduced, resulting in lower development cost.

An airborne surveillance radar demonstrator

Advances in signal processing technology offer the radar designer an increasing opportunity to develop sophisticated detection and imaging algorithms. However, the design of many existing surveillance radar systems is such that the development, proving and implementation of even the smallest algorithmic changes can require costly and time-consuming equipment modifications. In the design of future radar systems there is therefore a strong case for the use of a programmable processor which is separated from the microwave hardware by a clearly defined interface. This paper presents some results from a research programme which has developed such a rapid prototyping environment by interfacing an existing in-service airborne maritime surveillance radar to a commercially available computer workstation and a high-bandwidth tape recorder.

Systems Analysis of Noise Abatement Procedures Enabled by Advanced Flight Guidance Technology

Advanced flight guidance technologies such as area navigation utilizing the global positioning system offer the potential to reduce the impact of aircraft noise on communities surrounding airports by enabling more flexible approach and departure procedures that reduce noise exposure to the most sensitive areas. A systems analysis is presented of noise abatement procedures enabled by these technologies. NOISIM, the primary systems analysis tool, combines a flight simulator, a noise model, and a geographic information system to create a unique rapid prototyping environment in which the user can simulate an aircraft's operation in existing and potential guidance and navigation environments, while simultaneously evaluating the aircraft's noise impact. The analysis included generic and site specific studies of approach and departure procedures using 737-200 noise estimates. The results of the generic study of approach procedures indicate that a 3-deg decelerating approach provides significant noise reductions in comparison to the baseline instrument landing system (ILS) approach and is preferred by pilots to the more complex vertically segmented approach. In a study of approaches to runway 13L at Kennedy Airport, a 3-deg decelerating approach reduced the population impacted by noise greater than 60 dBA from over 250,000 in the ILS approach to less than 70,000. The results of the generic study of departure procedures indicate that the benefits of noise abatement departures are site specific. In a study of departures from runway 4R at Logan Airport, a noise abatement departure that combined a targeted thrust cutback with a dual turn lateral trajectory reduced the population impacted by peak noise greater than 60 dBA by over 15%.

A flexible interactive environment for embedded controllers

Today embedded control systems are created using tools that give insufficient support for rapid prototyping and code reuse. New tools for the implementation of embedded controllers are necessary. This paper presents the experimental software framework P a ̊ lsj o ̈ , and the language PAL. The P a ̊ lsj o ̈ system is a rapid prototyping environment designed to support on-line system reconfigurations and code reuse. PAL is a new language, designed for the implementation of control algorithms.

The design of a real-time engineering flight simulator for the rapid prototyping of avionics systems and flight control systems

This paper describes the design of a real-time flight simulator, which is based on a modular architecture of PCs coupled by Ethernet. The simulator is required to provide a rapid prototyping environment to support the design and evaluation of avionics systems and flight control systems. Methods are described to ensure real-time implementation of the equations of motions using a standard PC and the provision of real-time graphics to simulate aircraft displays using SVGA. The paper includes analysis of the performance of the flight modelling methods and the simulation of aircraft displays. The paper concludes that high fidelity flight models and aircraft displays can be implemented using standard PC platforms and Ethernet cards, if attention is given to the design of the simulator architecture. The resultant simulator provides a rapid prototyping environment, standardising on the packet format and low-level packet protocols of Ethernet,

A WWW computer integrated manufacturing environment for rapid prototyping and education

This paper describes an overview of a system integration project in which the development of a multimedia educational tool for designing simple mechanical parts has resulted in new procedures for Computer Integrated Manufacturing (CIM). The new procedures utilize the Internet for seamless integration of Computer Aided Design (CAD), Computer Aided Process Planning (CAPP), and Computer Aided Manufacturing (CAM). The result is a WWW-based CIM environment that not only promotes Design for Manufacturability, but seeks to decrease manufacturing time in a rapid prototyping service based on milling (Sarma 1995, Sarma et al., 1996). Furthermore, the environment utilizes multimedia to display process histories which are generated through the feedback of sensor data collected during fabrication. Remote designers can use this knowledge to monitor the manufacturing process and to redesign if necessary. The paper begins with the description of a specific case study called Reuleaux! , which allows students to design interesting parts while at the same time simplifying some of the downstream process planning and fixturing issues that occur in machining.