Embedded Control Systems Development with Giotto

Abstract

Giotto is a principled, tool-supported design methodology for implementing embedded control systems on platforms of possibly distributed sensors, actuators, CPUs, and networks. Giotto is based on the principle that time-triggered task invocations plus time-triggered mode switches can form the abstract essence of programming real-time control systems. Giotto consists of a programming language with a formal semantics, and a retargetable compiler and runtime library. Giotto supports the automation of control system design by strictly separating platform-independent functionality and timing concerns from platform-dependent scheduling and communication issues. The time-triggered predictability of Giotto makes it particularly suitable for safety-critical applications with hard real-time constraints. We illustrate the platform-independence and time-triggered execution of Giotto by coordinating a heterogeneous flock of Intel x86 robots and Lego Mindstorms robots.