Light-Weight Distributed Shared Memory for Small Mobile Commodity Robots

15.11.2002

Abstract
This project will develop, design and implement a light weight version of the PastSet distributed shared memory(DSM) system om a Lego MINDSTORM type robot. The purpose is to establish DSM as a basic infrastructure platform integrating the robot with resources in a distributed system. We describe the process of incorporating the robot into the PastSet environment and the implementation of the communication protocol as well as analyze and discuss the choices made. We aim to create a working project by first discussing various design solutions and then implement and create a prototype that satisfies our requirements. The rather limited memory footprint and somewhat slow central processing unit (CPU) on the RCX will govern most of our design choices as we have to move as much functionality away from the RCX as possible. Although infrared(IR) communication is adequate for most RCX systems, in this project it proved to be somewhat slow as IR is extensively used to communicate between RCX and PastSet server.