EasyLab: Model-Based Development of Software for Mechatronic Systems

Abstract

Model-based development tools are one possible solution to handle the increasing complexity of mechatronic systems. While traditional approaches often separate design of hardware and software, especially in mechatronic systems hardware/software interaction is the most critical component. Hence, both aspects must be considered in this context. The goal is a model-based development tool for software/hardware co-design including the generation of efficient code for the respective target platforms. EasyLab is a modular and easily expandable development tool especially suitable for such applications. Its objectives are to facilitate reusability and to accelerate the development process. It raises the level of abstraction and thus simplifies the development of mechatronic systems even for unexperienced users. A graphical user interface provides various modeling languages that are easy to use. By employing platform optimized generation of the code, efficiency of the resulting programs can be guaranteed, which we demonstrate on a set of experimental mechatronic systems.

Architecture Model to Improve the Development of Robotics Online Reconfiguration

“…Michael G et al, [12] applies the model-based development and code generation tool EasyLab [13] to the development of robots ,which can be converted hardware model into code ,that is executable for controllers, sensors and actuators of the robot. So it can simplify the robot development, but EasyLab tool has not yet achieve the support for distributed model and can't provide multiple robot components simultaneously in one EasyLab model, also has not yet combine with a service-oriented architecture.…”

A Software Architecture for Model-Based Programming of Robot Systems

“…EasyLab can be used to model the application logic of these systems and also the communication backend that allows other components to access them (see section 5.3 for an example). The template-based code generation approach provides the flexibility to generate code for different platforms such as middlewares or operating systems (see [3] for details). Fig.…”

“…As pointed out in [3], expandability is one of the primary design goals for EasyLab that is achieved by a clear separation of models, code-generation templates, execution and also GUI plug-ins. In addition to that, the concept of interfaces abstracts introspection and manipulation of execution instances.…”

“…The sensor provides calibrated and preprocessed data over Modbus. An example for a smart actuator is the "intelligent" pneumatic cylinder detailed in [3].…”

Advances in Robotics Research

“…The model-based code generation tool EasyLab [3] uses this modular strategy to allow specification of application requirements and behavior at a high level of abstraction. It currently supports device and application models.…”