The Quest Operating System for Real-Time Computing

Robotics and Automation Society

The Quest Operating System for Real-Time Computing – Presented by Dr. Richard West

Tuesday, February 9th, 2016
Doors open: 6:00 P.M.
Presentation: 6:30 P.M.
Dinner: 8:00 P.M.

Olin College
1000 Olin Way
Needham, MA 02492
Milas Hall Auditorium

Many applications in areas such as robotics, automotive and avionics systems, and manufacturing require support for real-time and safety critical tasks. Existing systems either do not provide adequate timing guarantees, are too cumbersome, or are not able to ensure the safe operation of tasks in the presence of faults. In this talk I will introduce the Quest operating system for real-time and safety critical computing.
Quest is being built from the ground up at Boston University, and operates on single- and multi-core processors. I will begin by briefly describing Quest’s unique virtual CPU (VCPU) scheduler, which integrates the management of real-time tasks and asynchronous events such as interrupts. Building upon this, I will describe the Quest-V separation kernel. Quest-V uses virtualization technologies found on many modern multi-core processors to partition the system into separate components. This leads to a chip-level distributed system, where failure of one component is isolated from other components, making it suitable for safety critical applications.

Finally, time-permitting, I will talk about the Quest-Arduino (Qduino) API for creating real-time multi-threaded tasks without the traditional complexities and lack of predictability associated with libraries such as Pthreads. Qduino is designed for physical computing in areas such as robotics, where tasks interact with the environment through sensors and actuators.

SPEAKER’S BIOGRAPHY

Dr. Richard West

Richard West is an Associate Professor of Computer Science at Boston University. His research interests encompass operating systems, real-time/embedded systems, resource management, kernels, system organization, and hardware-software interaction. His group is currently working on the development of the Quest real-time OS and the Quest-V separation kernel. Funding from the NSF and Intel is being used to develop several ports of Quest(-V) on Intel embedded platforms (Galileo, Edison, Minnowboard Max), for use in mixed-criticality applications in areas such as robotics, manufacturing, automotive systems and IoT.

In the past, Dr. West has collaborated with the resource management team at VMware, Inc. He worked on hypervisor scheduling, and cache modeling and management for multicore processors, which resulted in several patent submissions. Dr. West holds a Ph.D and M.S from the Georgia Institute of Technology, USA, and an M.Eng from the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England.

UNHOSTED DINNER

Bertucci’s
1257 Highland Ave.
Needham, MA 02492

Have more questions? Want to share a drink with the speaker? Want to network with fellow engineers and professionals? Just want to chat about the current goings-on in Robotics, or technology in general? Join us for dinner, where you can talk about Robotics in a more casual setting!

GENERAL INFORMATION

This and other RAS meetings are open to the general public. For more information about the RAS Boston Chapter, contact Chapter Chair Ryan Pettigrew at chair@robotics-boston.org or visit http://www.robotics-boston.org/.

To assist us in planning this meeting, please pre-register at http://www.ieeeboston.org/Register/.