Hard Real-Time Control and Coordination of Robot Tasks using Lua

Control and Coordination in industrial robot applications operatingunder hard real-time constraints is traditionally implemented inlanguages such as C/C++ or Ada. We present an approach to use Lua, alightweight and single threaded extension language that has beenintegrated in the Orocos RTT framework. Using Lua has severaladvantages: increasing robustness by automatic memory management andpreventing pointer related programming errors, supportinginexperienced users by offering a simpler syntax and permittingdynamic changes to running systems. However, to achieve deterministictemporal behavior, the main challenge is dealing with allocation andrecuperation of memory. We describe a practical approach to real-timememory management for the use case of Coordination. We carry outseveral experiments to validate this approach qualitatively andquantitatively and provide robotics engineers the insights and toolsto assess the impact of using Lua in their applications.

ISBN:978-3-0003-6193-7

Publication year:2011