Scripting is a powerful, high-level, cross-platform, dynamic, easy way of composing software modules as black boxes. Unfortunately, the high runtime overhead has prevented scripting from being widely adopted in embedded applications. This work proposes to overcome these obstacles by synthesizing light-weight, hostassisted scripting engines for embedded systems. The result is dramatically shortened development cycle due to the much higherstraction, interactive access and dynamic reconfigurability, robust in-field software upgradability, and compact code size. This framework has been successfully applied to ultra low-power sensor nodes with under 10KB of program memory to high-performance platforms with fast Ethernet. Categories and Subject Descriptors D.1 [Software]: Programming Techniques—General; C.3 [Computer Systems Organization]: Special Purpose and Application-Based Systems—Real-time and embedded systems General Terms Design, Languages Keywords Scripting, adaptive systems, ...
Jiwon Hahn, Qiang Xie, Pai H. Chou