Control system based on FreeRTOS for data acquisition and distribution on swarm robotics platform

Abstract

This paper deals with the use of the real time operating system FreeRTOS, which is implemented into the 32-bit microcontroller with ARM core on the swarm robotics platform. The main task of the realized control system is to ensure the communication with the different types of sensors that are parts of the swarm robotic platform (ultrasonic sensors, LIDAR - Light Detection And Ranging, GPS, etc.), and to prepare obtained information for the further use. The controlling of the robot movements according to the received demands is also one of the tasks. The control system separates the low-level parts (interfacing with the sensors and actuators) and the high-level parts (the algorithms running on the Raspberry Pi for the navigation and the swarm behavior realization). The main advantage of using the FreeRTOS operating system is the possibility of working with threads and pseudoparalelism on the single core microcontroller. This provides the possibility to separate whole activity into the individual tasks with assigned priorities.