Newsgroups: comp.robotics
Path: brunix!uunet!nic.unh.edu!newshost.unh.edu!rg
From: rg@msel.unh.edu (Roger Gonzalez)
Subject: Re: Autonomous VME robots
In-Reply-To: D.Lee@cs.ucl.ac.uk's message of 4 Mar 92 10: 27:53 GMT
Message-ID: <RG.92Mar5083330@nymph.msel.unh.edu>
Sender: news@nic.unh.edu (USENET News System)
Organization: UNH Marine Systems Engineering Lab
References: <2382@ucl-cs.uucp>
Date: Thu, 5 Mar 1992 13:33:30 GMT


At the UNH Marine Systems Lab, we run VxWorks on low power Oettle+Reichler 3U
VME boards in autonomous underwater vehicles.  Our ultimate system, once
completed, will have one bus with 3-4 68020 cpus, 3 counter/timer boards,
several A/D and D/A boards, 1 ethernet, 1 scsi (with hard drive).  This will
be ethernetted to another VME bus with additional cpus and mission specific
boards.  The ethernet will then connect to a removable fiber optic tether.

In the past, we have used pSOS on (power hungry) Ironics 6U VME boards
connected via serial lines to custom low level cpus.  Yuck.  Don't plan
on writing robotics code this way; you spend all your time writing and
debugging drivers.

-Roger



--
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting
 than the question of whether a submarine can swim" - Edsger W. Dijkstra 

Roger Gonzalez   -  rg@msel.unh.edu
Division of Bit Banging and Reluctant Robotics
UNH Marine Systems Engineering Laboratory, Durham, NH  03824-3525
(603) 862-4600 -4399 (fax)

