A Time-Triggered Distributed Object Computing Environment for Embedded Control Systems

The paper presents a time-triggered distributed object computing environment for embedded control systems such as automotive control systems. The time-triggered architecture is suitable for hard real-time systems. We present a time-triggered distributed object model as an extension to the time-triggered object model that consists of objects periodically updating their own attribute values. The model is suitable for embedded control systems in which the control logics are designed with control block diagrams. Replica objects are used for efficient location transparency in the model and inter-object communications are local method calls, not remote method invocations. We have developed a distributed computing environment based on the time- triggered distributed object model. The middleware maintains the replicas to be consistent with the original objects using periodic state messages. The middleware executes the replication processing with the stubs that bridge the original objects, the middleware, and the replicas. We have also developed a development environment for embedded control application programs based on the time-triggered distributed object model. The stubs are generated from the interface definitions written in CORBA-compliant IDL.