Embedded systems have traditionally been rather resource constrained with respect to memory and CPU capacity. Thus software for embedded systems has traditionally focused almost exclusively on performance and less on other qualities such as flexibility. New and much more powerful processors are however becoming viable also in embedded systems. This enhanced computational capability allows us to focus on more on flexible software that makes embedded systems interesting also in a pervasive computing context.

There is therefore a need for studying software architectures and software engineering principles for designing high-performance distributed embedded systems that are also adaptable, maintainable, and flexible towards new requirements and dynamic environments.

Object technology is seen as a key technology to achieve this goal. The Distributed Objects in Embedded Systems project has been started to study this field.

Partners
The following organizations participate in the project: Cotas A/S, Danfoss A/S, Danfoss Drives A/S, Engineering College of Aarhus, Mjølner Informatics A/S and University of Aarhus (CfPC).

Goals
Our goals are to describe and analyze architectures that are of high quality both with respect to flexibility and performance; and to construct and evaluate a number of prototypes of these architectures.

Themes
Our work is organized around a set of themes. We study requirements and define terminology. We study how to apply the remote method invocation paradigm to embedded systems. We study different architectures for communication. We study how distributed embedded systems fit into a pervasive and ubiquitous context.

Results
At the time of writing, results have been reported in the form of a number of technical reports that outlines terminology, describe and analyze architectural experiments, and describe aspects of specific architectures. The project has also produced a number of prototypes, that describe various aspects and designs for distributed embedded systems, including a simple framework for remote method invocation over both the TCP/IP and the CAN bus. A laboratory for development of CAN based software has been started at University of Aarhus. It is expected that a number of research papers will be accepted for publication in the near future.

Top