An Embedded Vehicular Controller with ARM and DSP for a Vision-Based AGV

An embedded vehicular controller with a real-time operating system (RTOS) uC/OS-II is designed and developed for a two-wheel differential driven automated guided vehicle by vision navigation (V-AGV) in this paper, in order to meet strict criteria on function, performance, cost and reliability, compared to its commercial counterpart of general purpose computer. The multi-processor embedded system with distributed architecture consists of a main-controller of vehicle management based on the ARM LPC2210, and a sub-controller of vision navigation based on the DSP TMS320DM642. The embedded RTOS uC/OS-II is used to construct a software development platform, on which different functions needed are described as several tasks, and a number of system services facilitate software realization. In the practical application of device reformation, a commercial AGV product is upgraded by the embedded vehicular controller we develop, on which a sophisticated algorithm of path tracking is implemented successfully and efficiently. The experimental result demonstrates the effectivity and advantages of the embedded multi-processor controller with the RTOS uC/OS-II presented in this paper versus its commercial competitor.