Software Development Platforms for Autonomous Systems

Specialized platforms have recently been employed in various autonomous systems, such as unmanned vehicles and mobile robotics, to address system development and integration challenges. This paper describes the key elements of platforms and their use in the development of autonomous systems. A software platform includes both a architectural framework and supporting tools. Software frameworks for autonomous systems typically combine hierarchical component architectures with domain-specific behavioral patterns. They can also provide many pre-written components that partially implement the solution. This provides an infrastructure to effectively construct the layered control of autonomous systems. Software platforms can be used to integrate low-level device drivers, hand-written or custom code, telemetry and communication software, and model-based intelligence in a robust manner. With the progress of modelbased development and automated generation of production quality code, platforms become increasingly valuable to system architects.