A model driven development approach using AADL and code generation to develop modular distributed electronic travel aid devices

Abstract

Electronic Travel Aids (ETAs) are devices that support people who are blind or visual impaired in tasks as obstacle detection/avoidance or navigation. ETAs consist of sensing, processing and presentation components. Many research projects develop new kinds of ETAs, introducing new presentation or sensing components. An optimal ETA should be a distributed system where each component is a communicating node. In this work we propose an MDD workflow to develop distributed ETAs. This workflow uses AADL to describe the system, its components and their communication. This supports an easy exchange of a component in its system model. So, research projects, for new presentation devices or presentation components, only have to change the node they are working on instead of developing a whole new system. Automatic code generation assures that the newly developed ETA component fits into the system.