Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (Madrid, Spain)
Real-Time System Development in Ada using LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT
Our purpose at the UPM is to provide a set of tools to fully develop a real-time application in Ada using as target the LEGO® Mindstorms® NXT robotics kit. These tools, working under Linux, provide real-time & embedded systems teachers with an alternative to conventional software models designed in classrooms and labs.
The experience gained by students with real-time systems has been frequently reduced to software models which lack a “real” development experience. Economic and complexity drawbacks of physical devices have been outmatched in the past years with simple and flexible programmable robotics kits like LEGO MINDSTORMS. The LEGO kit is the ideal platform so that master students of embedded & real-time systems are able to analyse, develop and implement a real-time system in Ada.
As part of this project, the GNAT compilation system for LEGO® MINDSTORMS NXT 2009 has been successfully ported to a Linux host. The new MINDSTORMS® Ravenscar edition for Linux is soon to be released.
Project homepage and binaries download website »