Modeling and timing analysis of micro-ROS application on an off-road vehicle control unit

Abstract

ROS is known to be the most popular middleware for the development of software in modern day robots. It's next version, ROS 2 is highly modular and offers flexibility by supporting on microprocessors running desktop operating systems. Micro-ROS puts the major ROS 2 features on microcontrollers, i.e., highly resource-constrained computing devices running specialized real-time operating systems. ROS 2 is also of great importance for other domains, including autonomous driving and the off-road sector. Accordingly, there is significant interest in bringing micro-ROS to typical automotive control units. These embedded platforms support AUTOSAR Classic OSEK-like operating system which is very different in many aspects when compared to the platforms supported by micro-ROS. Some of the aspects have already been addressed in a previous work. This thesis mainly focuses on mapping the micro-ROS execution scheme to AUTOSAR scheme and dynamic memory management of the micro-ROS stack. From the micro-ROS architecture perspective, to successfully port the stack on an AUTOSAR-based ECU, the middleware and other layers of the stack are also analysed and adapted using a standard approach to support tasks-like execution model instead of threads-like execution model. Additionally, the support for standard CAN protocol based on custom transport configuration with the hardware CAN on the BODAS ECU is introduced. Model-based development methods have proven their utility in automotive industry. Therefore, we also focus on describing the timing properties of the micro-ROS stack in a model-based approach. We develop a generic model which is independent of a specific modeling language. In the next step, we realize the generic model using the widely used AMALTHEA language and analyse how well the developed model predicts the timing behavior of micro-ROS tasks. Finally, the effectiveness of the approach regarding timing and modeling is demonstrated with a micro-ROS test application first on Linux and then on the off-road vehicle control unit BODAS RC18-12/40 by Bosch Rexroth.