On Tue, Mar 12, 2002 at 07:36:20PM -0800, Aparna Badve wrote: > Hi all, > What are advantages of using RTLinux over other OS > like windows for control of mobile robots through > internet.
The primary advantage, hard real time, lends itself to the robot side. The very deterministic scheduling of real time tasks affords the ability to hardware like things in software. I am using RTLinux for closed loop servo motor control, as well as generating the motor drive PWM waveforms. It's also possible on SMP systems to have very tight control over the binding of realtime to specific CPUs, quite a benefit in reducing latency in complicated real time applications. On top of the hard real time subsystem one has a complete Unix-like environment for "glue". I have found it much simpler to write networking applications for Unix-like operating systems than anything MS. Everthing is just _there_; development and debugging tools, libraries, utilities, secondary servers etc. The actual networking code is also much simpler, and, as a result, easier to understand and less prone to bugs. Scale of deployment is also an advantage; after the development cycle, should one choose, the OS can be easily stripped down to a tiny size often fitting neatly onto flash; or one can put it on larger, faster machines for complicated interactive graphical interfaces or "real time" rendering. It's really quite open. Then there's the "free" advantage, but that's another discussion... -R. -- GPG-fingerprint: 6CE9 8B6E 8089 FECC 4AA6 9CC9 F2B3 70A6 E98A 8B77
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