支援即時效能之嵌入式工作流程引擎

Abstract

許多現代的嵌入式系統，如網宇實體系統，以計算元件和實體元件緊密結合和協調為特性。可調整性、效率、適應性、可靠性和使用性是這些系統的主要議題。工作流程引擎是管理工作流程的應用程式，它幫助開發人員從原本的系統抽取出控制流程，因此可以增加可調整性和開發效率。本研究為嵌入式系統設計並實作一個工作流程引擎，使得能用較少的工作來調整工作流程。為了符合嵌入式系統的時間需求，工作流程引擎被設計成能滿足這些需求，並提供允入控制；對於某組工作流程而言，只要通過允入控制，則其所有的時間需求就會被保證。我們選擇了人形機器人作為範例應用，且將機器人的應用程式轉換成工作流程，並展示工作流程引擎如何提供即時效能保證和有彈性的程式開發方式。

Many modern embedded systems, such as cyber-physical systems, feature tight combinations of, and coordinations between computational and physical elements. Configurability, efficiency, adaptability, reliability, and usability are important issues for these systems. A workflow engine is a software application that manages workflows. It helps developers extract control flows from the original system, and thus is able to improve configurability and development efficiency. This research aims at the design and implementation of a workflow engine for embedded systems so as to configure workflows with less efforts. To meet timing requirements on embedded systems, the engine is designed to meet timing requirements, and provides admission control so that these requirements of a set of workflows are guaranteed as long as it is admitted. The example application is a humanoid robot. We model robot applications as workflows, and show that how the workflow engine provides real time guarantee and flexible ways of programming.