A Concept of Dynamically Reconfigurable Real-Time Vision System for Autonomous Mobile Robotics.

Abstract: In this article, we describe specific constraints of vision systems that are dedicated to be embedded in mobile robots. If PC based hardware architecture is convenient in this field because of its versatility, its flexibility, its performance and its cost, current real-time operating systems are not completely adapted to long processings with varying duration, and it is often necessary to oversize the system to guarantee fail-safe functioning. Also, interactions with other robotic tasks having more priority are difficult to handle. To answer this problem, we have developed a dynamically reconfigurable vision processing system, based on the innovative features of Cléopatre real-time applicative layer concerning scheduling and fault tolerance. This framework allows to define emergency and optional tasks to ensure a minimal quality of service for the other subsystems of the robot, while allowing to adapt dynamically vision processing chain to an exceptional overlasting vision process or processor overload. Thus it allows a better cohabitation of several subsystems in a single hardware, and to develop less expensive but safe systems, as they will be designed for the regular case and not rare exceptional ones. At last, it brings a new way to think and develop vision systems, with pairs of complementary operators