Kelb - A Real-Time Programming Environment for the Sony Aibo

Kelb is a new real-time programming environment developed at Uppsala University for the Sony AIBO ERS-210. It is aimed to provide efficiency by introducing a notion of light-weight tasks executing according to well-known real-time scheduling algorithms and resource protocols, while still allowing applications to be developed in a high-level abstract programming language. In this paper we give an overview of the design of Kelb and describe the status of the environment, currently including: a real-time programming language and compiler extending gcc for MIPS with support for time- and event-triggered tasks, a runtime library with support for static and dynamic preemptive scheduling algorithms (e.g. fixed priority and earliest deadline first), and a prototype connection to the Times tool allowing Kelb designs to be analysed for schedulabilty.