Real-time Communication Systems for Small Autonomousrobots: a Survey and Case Study

Autonomous systems perform complex tasks to analyseand to react on their environment. One way to handlethis complexity is distributing the functionality toseveral hardware modules. Even in small autonomoussystems the predictability of the communication andthe synchronization of all modules is vitally important. This book provides a survey of five protocols thatplay a major role in the automotive industry and inthe domain of real-time communication: CAN, LIN, Flexray, TTP/C, and TTP/A. The protocols are comparedand analysed regarding their suitability for smallautonomous systems. Following the results of this investigation, TTP/A isported to the hardware of the Tinyphoon robot, aresearch platform for small autonomous anddistributed systems. On the basis of the outcome ofthis case study enhancements and adoptions of TTP/Aare proposed. To address the diversity of hardware ageneral concept of making TTP/A more portable iselaborated.