Member Access The Academic Member Site
GNAT for LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT
Ravenscar Edition
GNAT for LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT – Ravenscar Edition is a port for the GNAT compilation system to the LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT robotic platform. Originally born as an education-oriented project at MIT Media Lab, the LEGO MINDSTORMS has evolved into a successful commercial product for education in robotics in a multitude of universities and high schools across the globe. The latest revision of the platform includes a 32 bits processor and supports several different sensors able to detect distance, colors and sounds and to communicate via the Bluetooth protocol.
GNAT for the LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT – Ravenscar Edition brings the possibility of experimenting with real-time embedded systems development using the Ada 2005, Ada 2012 and SPARK languages to an education-oriented robotic platform. Entire embedded systems, including software, hardware and sensors intercefacing, and wireless communications can be developed and verified using GNAT and SPARK.
Technical Details
GNAT for the LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT – Ravenscar Edition supports Ada-level real-time and concurrency features complying with the Ravenscar profile. The Ravenscar profile is a subset of Ada 2005 specifically conceived to build analyzable concurrent and real-time systems. The inclusion of a Ravenscar run-time will permit the development of Ada-only concurrent and real-time systems on the LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT. Differrently from the 2009 release of GNAT for LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT, the 2010 release does not rely on any operating system: it is an Ada-only bareboard solution leveraging on Ada 2005 features for concurrent and real-time behaviour.
Here’s what’s included:
- Support for the Ravenscar profile to bring Ada-level tasking to the LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT
- Support for Ada 2005 and a preview of Ada 2012
- Support for SPARK and RavenSPARK
- High-level drivers for the NXT brick, sensors and motors, including Bluetooth, written in Ada
- Getting Started material and examples of applications which can be used as teaching material
Lego Mindstorms NXT NOT included.
For more information on the LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT platform, see http://mindstorms.lego.com