RoboArch: A component-based tool proposal for developing hardware architecture for mobile robots

Abstract

This paper introduces a component-based tool proposal for developing hardware architecture for mobile robots at ESL (electronic system-level) based on reusable IP (intellectual property) cores. This tool, denominated RoboArch, provides a platform independent development environment where embedded systems are created in a visual environment from IP component libraries specified according to the IP-XACT XML (extensible markup language) schema, where a component can be a softcore processor, a dedicated hardware module or a high level model described in a non-synthesizable code. The systems developed in this visual programming environment can be either simulated directly at ESL (electronic system-level) using external environments for stimulus generation and result monitoring or synthesized for a hardware description representation at RTL (register transfer language), allowing its implementation on FPGA (field-programmable gate array).