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A DSL for specifying run-time adaptations for embedded systems: an application to vehicle stereo navigation

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Abstract

The traditional approach for specifying adaptive behavior in embedded applications requires developers to engage in error-prone programming tasks. This results in long design cycles and in the inherent inability to explore and evaluate a wide variety of alternative adaptation behaviors, critical for systems exposed to dynamic operational and situational environments. In this paper, we introduce a domain-specific language (DSL) for specifying and implementing run-time adaptable application behavior. We illustrate our approach using a real-life stereo navigation application as a case study, highlighting the impact and benefits of dynamically adapting algorithm parameters. The experiments reveal our approach effective, as such run-time adaptations are easily specified in a higher level by the DSL, and thus at a lower programming effort than when using a general-purpose language such as C.

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Acknowledgments

The work presented was partially supported by Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT) under grant SFRH/BD/47409/2008. Cardoso, Diniz, and Petrov acknowledge the partial support by the European Framework Programme 7 (FP7) under contract No. 248976. Any views expressed in this work are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the European Commission. The authors would also like to thank Ali Azarian for his help with the FPGA setup used for experimental evaluation.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Instituto Superior Técnico (IST), Technical University of Lisbon, Lisbon, Portugal

    André C. Santos & Diogo R. Ferreira

  2. Informatics Engineering Department, Faculty of Engineering (FEUP), University of Porto, Porto, Portugal

    João M. P. Cardoso

  3. INESC–ID, Lisbon, Portugal

    Pedro C. Diniz

  4. Honeywell International s.r.o., Prague, Czech Republic

    Zlatko Petrov

Authors
  1. André C. Santos
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  2. João M. P. Cardoso
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  3. Pedro C. Diniz
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  4. Diogo R. Ferreira
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  5. Zlatko Petrov
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to André C. Santos.

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Santos, A.C., Cardoso, J.M.P., Diniz, P.C. et al. A DSL for specifying run-time adaptations for embedded systems: an application to vehicle stereo navigation. J Supercomput 70, 1218–1248 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11227-014-1192-z

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