The NorthSTAR™ robot IDE

1 What is NorthSTAR™?

At present, there are two factors hindering the popularity of robot technology and its boost:
The first one is that the robot hardware has no uniform standard, and the other one is no uniform, versatile software for different robots.

Assuming A and B manufacturers both develop sweeping-bots with similar hardware. At present, if you want to transfer the functions of the robot A to robot B, there is no way but re-programming. Concerning current prosperous PC market, you will find that if A and B manufacturers produce PCs, the same software function can be achieved only by simply copying the corresponding software (if copyrights ignored). This is an important reason why the PC market can be developed to today’s scale.

In the phase of no uniform robot hardware standard, UPTECH Robotics has launched the NorthSTAR™ graphical integrated development environment (IDE), in order to improve the robot's versatility and reduce the development difficulty, which includes the following three functions:

l         Using a graphical, visual approach to carry out robot programming and simultaneously generating ANSI-C source code, which can be cross-compiled as different binaries, and downloaded to the robot controller; All programming, debugging, compiling and downloading can be done all in NorthSTAR™. 

l         Integrated 3D simulation. It can be applied to motion simulation, gait and path planning. Simulation data can be input into graphical programming environment;

l         Integrated, real-time and visual data acquisition and display which act as a virtual oscilloscope, i.e., real time monitoring data from various parts of the robot, and displaying it on the PC window through waveform when the robot is running.

2 Compare with high-level language programming

Use NorthSTAR™, you can development robot application visual, graphical, and fast. You do not need to know any programming language, just drag icons and link, and click the compile icon. The NorthSTAR will automatically generate C code, cross-compile them (you can choose AVR object platform, PXA270 platform, or other platforms supported) and then download the binary to the controller.

l         The program project generated by NorthSTAR™ is some-way processor independent. Currently it supports the PXA270 (32 bit / 520MHz processor), AVR MCU (8-bit / 16MHz), AT89C51 MCUs. As long as C language compiler and the corresponding driver programming is provided, user program can apply to other platforms, such as the PC/Windows platform, or ARM9 platform.

l         Because of the cross-platform feature, transplant program between isomeric platforms is possible. The program for the A manufacturer's sweeping robot can be adopted by the same type robot in B manufacturer with a simple modification or even without modification——if both manufacturer support NorthSTAR™.

3 Compare with Microsoft MSRDS

l         The NorthSTAR have much higher code-efficient. Program code is cross-compiled into binary and execute on object platform’s processor, rather than needing layers of middle-ware and virtual machine as MSRDS does, so the code efficiency is much higher. A program generated by MSRDS needs at least 500MHz 32-bit processor (which runs Windows or Windows CE, and .NET framework support) while the program generated by NorthSTAR can operate on the 8-bit MCUs. Consequently, the latter’s application field will be much wider and especially suitable for low-cost education/entertainment robot.

l         Code is running in highly real-time platform. A real-time Linux kernel, No middle-ware, cross-compiled to binary of object platforms, these features resulted in high code efficiency, and highly real-time.

l         The NorthSTAR™ supports graphical programming and C coding mixed development. It’s recommended that starters to use graphical programming; for advanced users or robot manufacturers, who have special requirements, can use graphical mixed C coding programming to develop an application. This way can provide users the enough flexibility.

l         Currently the NorthSTAR™ can not support multi-thread programming yet. This feature is still under development.