Research

TraX

TraX (Trace eXplorer) is a tool dedicated to the analysis of traces of concurrent distributed systems. Such traces are modeled using partial ordered set of events (variable assignments). TraX uses a symbolic approach in order to reduce testing/monitoring time. For more information, you can visit the TraX homepage.

dSL

Distributed Supervision Language (dSL) is distributed language for the control of complex industrial processes. dSL is an imperative language with some OO concepts. The main concept is to ease the burdon of the programmer by offering a centralised view of the process to control. This means that a program is specified as if all actuators and sensors are available without any communication. The dSL distributer distributes the centralised code into as many programs as there are different sites, without the developper's intervention. For more information, you can visit the dSL homepage on Bram De Wachter's homepage.

The dSL project is funded by la région Bruxelles Capitale and with collaboration of Macq Electronique.

Lego Mindstorm

The Lego Mindstorms Robotic Invention System (RIS in short) is a widely popular kit for the development of robots in Lego. At the heart of this is the RCX (see figure), wich is basicaly a Hitachi 8300 microcontroller embedded in a Lego brick. As shown on the figure, the RCX has three inputs for connecting sensors, and three outputs for connecting motors. There exists mainly two kinds of sensor: touch sensor, allowing for example, to detect obstacle, and light sensor allowing to detect color change and for example follow a black line.

For programming the RCX, a number of possibilities exists: C/C++ with brickOS, Java with lejOS,... (for more details, see links below). The program is compiled and then transfered to the RCX via the IR tower.

It's a dream come true for all the people out there (myself included) who played Lego in their youth and don't want to quit :-) Seriously though, it's a wonderful platform for testing small toy applications.

Here is a few link of interest:





The Lego Mindstorms's RCX brick