Implementation of the "Embedded Object" concept and an Example of Using it with UML

Abstract

Traditionally, embedded system design process demands a considerable amount of expertise, time and money. This hinders the testing of new research results in robotics with real embedded systems, which would be required in order to bring the research results into real use. We have earlier presented an easy and fast embedded system development concept based on embedded objects. Embedded object concept utilizes common object oriented methods used in software by applying them into combined Lego-like software and hardware entities. This concept enables people without comprehensive knowledge in electronics or embedded systems design to create new embedded systems. In this paper, we present an implementation of the embedded object concept as Atomi-objects, and we show how these objects can be mapped to UML, a notation commonly used in object oriented software development, through an example of creating a simple cleaning robot. The significance of this paper is to present the presuppositions for the embedded object concept to be used with object oriented design methods.