The Performance Impact when Optimizing Mapping Algorithms for an FPGA-based Mobile Robot

• Type: Article in International Conference Proceedings Book
• Date: 2010

Authors

Manuel Luís C. Reis (Author) FEUP; João M. P. Cardoso (Author) FEUP; João P. C. Ferreira (Author) FEUP

Conference proceedings National

Title: Actas das VI Jornadas sobre Sistemas Reconfiguráveis - REC'2010

Pages: 103-110

VI Jornadas sobre Sistemas Reconfiguráveis (REC'2010)

Aveiro, 4 a 5 de Fevereiro, 2010

Scientific classification

FOS: Engineering and technology > Electrical engineering, Electronic engineering, Information engineering

CORDIS: Technological sciences > Engineering > Electronic engineering ; Technological sciences > Engineering > Computer engineering

Other information

Abstract (EN): FPGA-based solutions are being used to meet performance requirements in embedded systems. The mobile robotics field is an appropriate domain to evaluate whether FPGA-based systems are capable of managing complex computing tasks. This paper presents an autonomous mobile robot prototype that includes an FPGA board as the main central processing component. In this work we evaluate the prototype using mobile robotics mapping algorithms (i.e., algorithms able to build a map of the environment). These algorithms rely mainly on probabilities and are computationally intensive. The implementation used in this paper is based on an environment occupation grid. An uncertainty model of the sensor used to measure the distance of the robot to the obstacles in the environment is used to update the probabilities. We start the experiments by analysing the performance impact of using hardware modules, such as FPU and cache memory. Then, we consider modifications in the updating algorithm to reduce the overall execution time. The overall improvements allowed for an execution time of the updating task of 9.83 ms for an implementation based on Bayes’s algorithm and 10.86ms for Dempster-Shafer’s algorithm, both at the maximum distance considered.

Language: English

Type (Professor's evaluation): Scientific

No. of pages: 8