AMiRo-OS

AMiRo-OS is an operating system for the base version of the Autonomous Mini

Robot (AMiRo) [1]. It utilizes ChibiOS (a real-time operating system for

embedded devices developed by Giovanni di Sirio; see <http://chibios.org>) as

system kernel and extends it with platform specific configurations and further

functionalities and abstractions.

Copyright (C) 2016..2019  Thomas Schöpping et al.

(a complete list of all authors is given below)

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify

it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by

the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at

your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but

WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of

MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU

General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License

along with this program.  If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.

This research/work was supported by the Cluster of Excellence

Cognitive Interaction Technology 'CITEC' (EXC 277) at Bielefeld

University, which is funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG).

Authors:

 - Thomas Schöpping          <tschoepp[at]cit-ec.uni-bielefeld.de>

 - Marc Rothmann

References:

 [1] S. Herbrechtsmeier, T. Korthals, T. Schopping and U. Rückert, "AMiRo: A

     modular & customizable open-source mini robot platform," 2016 20th

     International Conference on System Theory, Control and Computing (ICSTCC),

     Sinaia, 2016, pp. 687-692.

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This file will help you to setup all required software on your system, compile

the source code, and flash it to the AMiRo modules.

================================================================================

CONTENTS:

  1  Required software

    1.1  Git

    1.2  Bootloader & Tools

    1.3  System Kernel

    1.4  Low-Level Drivers

  2  Recommended software

    2.1  gtkterm and hterm

    2.2  QtCreator IDE

    2.3  Doxygen & Graphviz

  3  Building and flashing

================================================================================

1 - REQUIRED SOFTWARE

---------------------

In order to compile the source code, you need to install the GNU ARM Embedded

Toolchain. Since this project uses GNU Make for configuring and calling the

compiler, this tool is requried too. AMiRo-OS uses ChibiOS as system kernel,

so you need a copy of that project as well.

1.1 - Git

---------

Since all main- and subprojects are available as Git repositories, installing a

recent version of the tool is mandatory.

1.2 Bootloader & Tools

----------------------

AMiRo-OS can take advantage of an installed bootloader if such exists and

provides an interface. By default, AMiRo-BLT is included as a Git submodule and

can easily be initialized via the ./setup.sh script. If requried, you can

replace the used bootloader by adding an according subfolder in the ./bootloader

directory. Note that you will have to adapt the makefiles and scripts, and

probably the operating system as well.

AMiRo-BLT furthermore has its own required and recommended software tools as

described in its README.txt file. Follow th instructions to initialize the

development environment manually or use the ./setup.sh script.

1.3 System Kernel

-----------------

Since AMiRo-OS uses ChibiOS as underlying system kernel, you need to acquire a

copy of it as well. For the sake of compatibility, it is included in AMiRo-OS as

a Git submodule. It is highly recommended to use the ./setup.sh script for

initialization. Moreover, you have to apply the patches to ChibiOS in order to

make AMiRo-OS work properly. It is recommended to use the .setup.sh script for

this purpose.

If you would like to use a different kernel, you can add a subfolder in the

./kernel/ directory and adapt the scripts and operating system source code.

1.4 Low-Level Drivers

---------------------

Any required low-level drivers for the AMiRo hardware are available in an

additional project: AMiRo-LLD. It is included as a Git subodule and can be

initialized via the ./setup.sh script.

2 - RECOMMENDED SOFTWARE

------------------------

AMiRo-OS can take advantage of an installed bootloader, which is recommended for

the best experience. In order to use all features of AMiRo-OS it is also

recommended to install either the 'hterm' or 'gtkterm' application for accessing

the robot. To ease further development, this project offers support for the

QtCreator IDE.

2.1 - gtkterm and hterm

-----------------------

Depending on your operating system it is recommended to install 'gtkterm' for

Linux (available in the Ubuntu repositories), or 'hterm' for Windows. For

gtkterm you need to modify the configuration file ~/.gtktermrc (generated

automatically when you start the application for the first time) as follows:

  port	= /dev/ttyAMiRo0

  speed	= 115200

  bits	= 8

  stopbits	= 1

  parity	= none

  flow	= none

  wait_delay	= 0

  wait_char	= -1

  rs485_rts_time_before_tx	= 30

  rs485_rts_time_after_tx	= 30

  echo	= False

  crlfauto	= True

For hterm you need to configure the tool analogously. With either tool the robot

can be reset by toggling the RTS signal on and off again, and you can access the

system shell of AMiRo-OS. If you need legacy support for older version of

AMiRo-BLT, you can replace the port value by '/dev/ttyUSB0'.

Advanced users can use several connections to multiple modules simultaneously.

Each additional programmer will be available as '/dev/ttyAMiRo<N>' (and

'/dev/USB<N>' respectively) with <N> being an integer number starting from zero.

Please note: Those interfaces are ordered by the time when they have been

detected by the operating system.

2.2 - QtCreator IDE

-------------------

In order to setup QtCreator projects for the three AMiRo base modules, you can

use the provided ./setup.sh script. Further instructions for a more advanced

configuration of the IDE are provided in the ./tools/qtcreator/README.txt file.

2.3  Doxygen & Graphviz

-----------------------

In order to generate the documentation from the source code, Doxygen and

Graphviz are requried. It is recommended to install these tool using the

default versions for your system. Ubuntu users should simply run

  >$ sudo apt-get install doxygen graphviz

3 - BUILDING AND FLASHING

-------------------------

Each time you modify any part of AMiRo-OS, you need to recompile the whole

project for the according AMiRo module. Therefore you can use the ./Makefile by

simply executing 'make' and follow the instructions. Alternatively, you can

either use the makefiles provided per module in ./os/modules/<ModuleToCompile>

or - if you want to compile all modules at once - the makefile in the

./os/modules folder. After the build process has finished successfully, you

always have to flash the generated program to the robot. Therefore you need an

appropriate tool, such as stm32flash (if you don't use a bootloader) or

SerialBoot (highly recommended; provided by AMiRo-BLT). Similarly to the

compilation procedure as described above, you can flash either each module

separately, or all modules at once by executing 'make flash' from the according

directory.

When using SerialBoot, please note that you must connect the programming cable

either to the DiWheelDrive or the PowerManagement module for flashing the

operating system. All other modules are powered off after reset so that only

these two offer a running bootloader, which is required for flashing.

================================================================================