Design of Distributed Reconfigurable Robotics Systems with ReconROS

Robotics applications process large amounts of data in real time and require compute platforms that provide high performance and energy efficiency. FPGAs are well suited for many of these applications, but there is a reluctance in the robotics community to use hardware acceleration due to increased design complexity and a lack of consistent programming models across the software/hardware boundary. In this article, we present ReconROS , a framework that integrates the widely used robot operating system (ROS) with ReconOS, which features multithreaded programming of hardware and software threads for reconfigurable computers. This unique combination gives ROS 2 developers the flexibility to transparently accelerate parts of their robotics applications in hardware. We elaborate on the architecture and the design flow for ReconROS and report on a set of experiments that underline the feasibility and flexibility of our approach.

Generic framework for multi-objective design space exploration for dynamically reconfigurable systems

In recent years the Run-Time-Reconfigurable (RTR) computing systems have become the core of next generation of adaptive embedded systems. One of the major problems in this class of systems is run-time adaptation of their architecture to the dynamic workload and environmental conditions. In most cases this adaptation is considered as multi-objective optimization process which should be conducted in run-time. Therefore, the goal of this research work was to explore the existing methods of doing multi-objective optimization and analyze their applicability for a system with potential of reconfiguration (i.e. a situation when constrains of the system can change during the course of operation). Then the development of generic framework of this optimization mechanism has to be done. This required analysis and selection of proper approach for multi-objective space exploration. The methodology based on Architecture Configuration Graph was chosen and its searching technique improved to allow faster convergence to a solution that satisfies objective constraints while optimizing specified objective. The run-time complexity analysis was done for modified methodology as well as the testing of the implemented framework to demonstrate its faster performance. The experimental results have shown the ability for run-time architecture adaptation and further utilization of the proposed framework as a core of real-time operating systems (RTOS) for dynamically reconfigurable computers.

Generic framework for multi-objective design space exploration for dynamically reconfigurable systems

In recent years the Run-Time-Reconfigurable (RTR) computing systems have become the core of next generation of adaptive embedded systems. One of the major problems in this class of systems is run-time adaptation of their architecture to the dynamic workload and environmental conditions. In most cases this adaptation is considered as multi-objective optimization process which should be conducted in run-time. Therefore, the goal of this research work was to explore the existing methods of doing multi-objective optimization and analyze their applicability for a system with potential of reconfiguration (i.e. a situation when constrains of the system can change during the course of operation). Then the development of generic framework of this optimization mechanism has to be done. This required analysis and selection of proper approach for multi-objective space exploration. The methodology based on Architecture Configuration Graph was chosen and its searching technique improved to allow faster convergence to a solution that satisfies objective constraints while optimizing specified objective. The run-time complexity analysis was done for modified methodology as well as the testing of the implemented framework to demonstrate its faster performance. The experimental results have shown the ability for run-time architecture adaptation and further utilization of the proposed framework as a core of real-time operating systems (RTOS) for dynamically reconfigurable computers.