Treffer: Arts'Codes: a new methodology for the development of real-time embedded applications for control systems

Embedded real-time applications have to allow interaction between the control computer and the controlled environment. Controlling the environment requires in particular to take into account its time constraints and critical logical conditions. One of the main programmer efforts in real-time application's development is to trace the incoming events, and to perform reactions based on the current system status, according to the application requirements. All this have to be handled, although external events may come in the middle of a critical reaction, which may disturb it. This problem involves two difficulties: * The cognitive efforts to percept the problem, and consequently to express the solution. * The correct translation of this solution to code. Two requirements were defined in this research in order to achieve high-quality performance: clearness and robustness, clearness in the design, and robustness in the execution. In this work the author proposes a methodology and a tool for real-time application's development that uses or implies an innovated form of design based on natural-cognitive researches. This design method has clear compilation's rules to produce an Object-Oriented light-code, suitable for embedded platforms. These compilation's rules introduce to the code implicit security and synchronization's elements, to support robust execution. In this methodology, clear development phases were defined, using a high-degree of reuse and even polymorphism, which were emphasized in the research. Several existing ideas were improved/adapted and synthesized together with the author's innovation, creating the Arts'Codes method for real-time application development. The work includes cognitive evaluations, assuring the natural skills of the design. Arts'Codes method proposes a natural VPL (Visual Programming Language) for real-time applications, based on hierarchic components. This VPL is built on a minimum of diagrams: one for the static architecture and one for the dynamic behaviour, with a similar restricted ...