Discussion about new system structure

[sugihara-16]

For developers,

In order to refine this aerial robot system into a more sophisticated OSS, I suggest the following reforms:

• Support ROS2
• Plugin-like firmware architecture
• Useful interface for light users

I would like to discuss the architecture of the system we should aim for and the specific tasks required to achieve it.

[sugihara-16]

Transition to ROS2

• Our system should support ROS2 for real-time and reliability reasons, while it should also support ROS1 for a while.
• In addition to the system structure, we also have to introduce new implementation to communicate with low level processor via ros because ROS2 doesn't support rosserial.

ToDo

• Complete separation of ros-dependent and -independent parts of the system.
• Implement both ROS1 and ROS2version for ROS dependencies
• Introducing micro-ros instead of rosserial.

[sugihara-16]

Plugin structure for firmware

• To build firmware for a variety of hardware configurations, a plug-in system composed of appropriately modularized programs is required.
• Modularizing the program for each small function makes it easy to develop additional features.
  
• In addition, as software becomes a plug-in system, the entire system needs to be more clearly hierarchized.

ToDo

• Implementation of a mechanism that enables setup of software configurations from higher-level processes
• Modularization of each feature

[tongtybj]

I am just curious about what "Nervous system" stands for in the about figure.

[sugihara-16]

I referred https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/jssst/17/6/17_6_560/_pdf/-char/ja , and according ot this, "Nervous system" represents the processes that should be autonomously executed in high frequency and independently from the high-level process such as controller, estimator, and so on. In my understanding, in the case of RTOS, functions themselves that are called directly by timers correspond to "Nervous sytems".

[tongtybj]

Thx for sharing the article. I also learnt the similar design philosophy from ros_control and gazebo:

• https://wiki.ros.org/ros_control
• https://classic.gazebosim.org/tutorials?tut=ros_control

[sugihara-16]

Thx, these two are pretty useful examples.