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P. Peti:
"Monitoring and Configuration of a TTP/A Cluster in an Autonomous Mobile Robot";
Supervisor: H. Kopetz, W. Elmenreich; Institut für Technische Informatik, 2001.

The industry calls for flexible yet easy to implement real-time fieldbus protocols that provide deterministic service. A protocol that is perfectly suited for today's industrial and automotive requirements is the time triggered protocol TTP/A. This work presents the design and implementation of an autonomous mobile robot instrumented with the TTP/A protocol. The case study shows the power of the protocol in regard of flexibility, dynamic configuration, and online diagnosis. The robot's main task is the exploration of its environment and the computation of a safe path through the surroundings.
Within the scope of this master's thesis special tools have been developed to accelerate the implementation process and to monitor the correct function of the smart car. Based on an overview of current monitoring approaches and their advantages hardware monitoring (bus sniffing) and hybrid monitoring have been implemented and evaluated in the case study. Monitoring applications allow to gain insight into the system's behavior while the system is in action, what proves to be an effective way of verifying the proper function of the system. The emerging need for remote monitoring was satisfied by the implementation of an Internet service that allows direct access to the system.

One of the design goal was the realization of hot "Plug and Play" capability, that means the connection, identification and integration of new sensor nodes during runtime. Related work in this field state that the dynamic modification of the system during runtime is challenging but also very error prone if done manually without the support of tools. The above mentioned monitoring tool was extended to allow dynamic adaptation of the real-time system of the mobile robot.

http://www.vmars.tuwien.ac.at/php/pserver/docdetail.php?DID=753&viewmode=thesis