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Please suggest me which RTOS can be integrated with ROS?

asked 2016-11-07 23:36:35 -0500

TraiBo
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Hi, I am working on a 7- axis robot in which each joint is controlling by a BLDC motor with the help of Elmo gold whistle drive. The motor drive is using Ethercat as a communication interface using SOEM drivers. Now, coming to the Ethercat communication part, is it necessary to use RTOS to avoid packet loss or can SOEM driver it-self can take care about the transmission and packet loss? What is the role of RTOS, if it is necessary to integrate?

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answered 2017-10-17 07:30:41 -0500

Jan Carstensen
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It is possible to use SOEM to control a number of EtherCAT slaves without an RTOS. This is done on the KUKA youbot for example:

https://github.com/youbot/youbot_driver

Since the Master is in control of the EtherCAT cycle, package loss should not be a problem. However, on a general-purpose OS (non-RTOS), such as Ubuntu with mainline Kernel, you will experience control jitter. In some cases, the EtherCAT slaves expect a new control message every few milliseconds. And if they do not receive the message in time, they will shut down. This behavior is entirely slave dependant.

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Asked: 2016-11-07 23:36:35 -0500

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Last updated: Oct 17 '17

Please suggest me which RTOS can be integrated with ROS? edit

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Please suggest me which RTOS can be integrated with ROS?