Foucault's Pendulum in the Distributed Control Lab

The ’Distributed Control Lab’ [6] at Hasso-PlattnerInstitute, University of Potsdam allows experimentation with a variety of physical equipment via the web (intra and internet), among them the Lego Mindstorm robots and Foucault’s Pendulum. In order to conduct control experiments, students may write programs, which are validated, run on a simulator, and eventually downloaded on the actual control device. We use online replacement of software components (dynamic re-configuration) as a safeguard mechanism to avoid damage to our hardware. Our research focuses on the extension of middleware concepts to embedded devices. The component-based architecture of the laboratory in conjunction with given timing and safety constraints dictated by the experiments make our infrastructure an ideal candidate for studying system predictability, availability and security in context of middleware-based dynamic control systems. Within this paper we are going to describe our extensible architecture fo...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2003
• Where: WORDS
• Authors: Andreas Rasche, Peter Tröger, Michael Dirska, Andreas Polze
• Keywords: Actual Control Device, Foucault’s Pendulum, Middleware-based Dynamic Control, WORDS 2003