Design Tools for Rapid Prototyping of Embedded Controllers

Electronic devices used in the scope of robotics and embedded systems have to be adapted to numerous external events and many of them might be unknown in advance. This application-specific particularity requires environment-specific adaptation and frequent changes in the predefined behaviour. In general, all feasible functionality cannot be incorporated in the device during the design phase, i.e. some eventual modifications are postponed until physical tests in real working conditions. Even after executing physical tests, some unexpected events (requiring the appropriate device reaction) might appear. Thus, either sophisticated adaptable electronics has to be implemented or the device has to be able to communicate with another more intelligent host computer, which would assist to cope with emerging problems. The paper suggests tools that provide support for dealing with the considered situations. This is achieved through the following: 1) FPGA-based prototyping core board (reconfigurable platform) establishing both wired and wireless interactions with host computers; 2) Design templates and libraries for interacting with standard peripheral equipment and widely used components for different types of control and computations; 3) Software providing support for interactions with the core board; 4) Intellectual property cores for solving a number of optimization problems common to many engineering applications