Approach for Implementing Object-Oriented Real-Time Models on Top of Embedded Targets

Over the last years, object-orientation has been recognized as a suitable technique for the modeling and design of real-time systems. Although modeling strategies archived a high-level of maturity, current run-time infrastructures have not reached “the Nirvana”. The so called middleware, which provide adequate abstractions for programming object-oriented real-time applications, still demands lots of computational efforts. When considering an embedded system, where processing power and memory footprints are very tight, these nice environments are often out of consideration, and programming is done using low-level languages, missing the basic object-oriented principles. This paper describes possible alternative implementations for an object-oriented model of a mobile robotic application. It gives some insights in the problems (and their possible solutions) that occur in the development of object-oriented real-time systems on top of embedded architectures.