Inplementation of RCS-OS for Intelligent Robot

Abstract

Since the software of intelligent robot must be very complicated and high level, their modularization is important for effecient development. To perform modularization of software, it is first required, to develop the operating system which plays the nuclear part of modularized programs.
Authors are developing the self-contained robot “Yamabico 9” and “Yamabico 10” to research the intelligence of the robots. And for this purpose, they have designed and implimented the small size real-time OS-RCS (Robot Control System) for Yamabicos.
RCS consists of “kernel” which supports multi-process programing, message communication between processes, timer function and etc., and “I/O monitors” that control I/O modules like a ultrasonic range finder. RCS also includes the programs working on the robot base for robot program development.
Although RCS is very small size software system, it has almost enough function as a real-time operating system for robots, and now serves well to program the robot intelligent behavior.