Software integration: lessons learned with the ETHNOS environment

This paper describes our experiences in the integration of different software components for autonomous robots. In particular, it presents ETHNOS II, a real-time multithreaded programming environment, specifically designed to facilitate the development of distributed robotic systems. ETHNOS II is composed of an object oriented API-Application Programming Interface-and a dedicated operating system built on top of a RT POSIX OS. The ETHNOS characteristics (in particular the communication services provided) are discussed, focusing on their properties and on their effects on the resulting system. Examples of integration will be provided, and the results experimentally evaluated on real robots