An Internal Data Non‐Hiding‐Type Real‐Time Kernel and Its Application to a Mechatronics Controller

Abstract

SUMMARY For a mechatronics equipment controller that controls robots and machine tools, high‐speed motion control processing is essential. The software system of the controller, as is the case with other embedded systems, is composed of three layers of software, including the real‐time kernel layer, middleware layer, and application software layer, running on dedicated hardware. The application layer, which is the top layer, consists of a large number of tasks, and the application functions of the system are achieved through cooperation between these tasks. In this paper, we propose an internal data non‐hiding‐ type real‐time kernel in which customizing task control is possible by only making changes in the program code on the task side, without any changes in the program code of the real‐time kernel. It is necessary to reduce the overhead caused by real‐time kernel task control for improving the speed of the motion control of mechatronics equipment. For this purpose customization of the task control function is needed. We developed the internal data non‐cryptic‐type real‐time kernel ZRK to evaluate this method, and applied it to the control of a multisystem automatic lathe. The speed‐up of task cooperation processing was confirmed by combined task control processing on the task side program code using the internal data non‐hiding‐type real‐time kernel ZRK. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Electron Comm Jpn, 96(12): 61–73, 2013; Published online in Wiley Online Library (http://wileyonlinelibrary.com). DOI 10.1002/ecj.11481