University of Adelaide Australia
Real-Time Software Development with GNAT for Mindstorms
GNAT for Mindstorms 2012
Final year students, Leighton Earl & Oliver Francis Roch, from The University of Adelaide undertook a project to create a system with both safety-critical and real-time components using GNAT Ada and Lego Mindstorms NXT.
In undertaking the project the students became familiar with concepts of robotics, task scheduling, safety critical programming and had learnt the Ada programming language from scratch.
The resultant system comprises two forklifts, designed to work autonomously and simultaneously, retrieving creates from one designated area and transport them to another whilst avoiding collision.
GNAT for Mindstorms 2011
A project team from the University of Adelaide was tasked with creating a demonstrator utilising safety critical programming techniques as part of their final year project.
Utilising the latest release of the GNAT for Mindstorms product, their robot supports the Ravenscar profile and is targeted at the ARM 7 based Mindstorms NXT platform.
It traverses the table and when an edge is detected changes direction and continues on a different path. By introducing a randomness into the change in direction, the coverage of the table is guaranteed as demonstrated by sweeping of objects off that table.