MiRPA - Middleware for Robotic and Process Control Applications

The term "Distributed Real-Time Systems" has been one of the major keywords in many research areas since decades. Real-time middleware solutions provide and enable odularization possibilities, simplification during the whole software development process, and a valuable flexibility for setting up concrete software architectures. On the other hand, a iddleware layer leads to a necessary overhead that increases latency times for intercommunication. During this talk, demands and requirements on middleware concepts optimized for hard real-time systems are discussed with respect to an evaluation for the usage in the field of robotics. The key part of the presentation presents the real-time middleware solution MiRPA (Middleware for Robotic and Process Control Applications), which is a successful in-house development of the Institute for Robotics and Process Control of the Technical University of Braunschweig. Its most important features as well as sample applications and evaluations on latencies, jitter, and data throughput are presented in this talk.