Interface Design for Smart Transducers

This paper describes design issues on smart transducer interfaces to hide the internal node properties and allow a decoupling of applications from communication properties like message timing, flow control and bus access. We present a smart transducer interface that incorporates three different interfaces (real-time service, diagnostic/maintenance, configuration/planning). Further decomposition of real-time systems can be provided by hiding the sensor properties from the application program. Therefore, a data structure that represents a model of the environment is introduced. This extra interface reduces the complexity of the application and enables reuse of the application code. Finally, an application of the presented concepts is described in a case study featuring a mobile robot.