Jiao: Bridging Isolation and Customization in Mixed Criticality Robotics
James Yen, Zhibai Huang, Zhixiang Wei, Tinghao Yi, Shupeng Zeng + 3 more
TLDR
Jiao offers a novel architecture for mixed-criticality robotics, balancing safety-critical isolation with user customization on shared multicore platforms.
Key contributions
- A Safe IO Cell provides hardware-level override for critical functions.
- A Parameter Synchronization Service simplifies cross-domain complexity.
- A Safety Communication Layer enables IEC 61508-aligned verification.
- Reduces cycle-period jitter by 84.5% and tail timing error by an order of magnitude.
Why it matters
Consumer robotics needs to consolidate critical functions and user apps, but existing solutions make customization difficult for end-users. Jiao solves this by bridging isolation and customization, enhancing safety while allowing flexible robot behavior modifications. This makes advanced robotics more accessible and robust.
Original Abstract
Consumer robotics demands consolidation of safety-critical control, perception pipelines, and user applications on shared multicore platforms. While static partitioning hypervisors provide hardware-enforced isolation, directly transplanting automotive architectures encounters an expertise asymmetry problem in which end-users modifying robot behavior lack the systems knowledge that platform developers possess. We present an architecture addressing this challenge through three integrated components. A Safe IO Cell provides hardware-level override capability. A Parameter Synchronization Service encapsulates cross-domain complexity. A Safety Communication Layer implements IEC~61508-aligned verification. Our empirical evaluation on an ARM Cortex-A55 platform demonstrates that partition isolation reduces cycle-period jitter by 84.5\% and cuts tail timing error by nearly an order of magnitude (p99 $|$jitter$|$ from 69.0\,$μ$s to 7.8\,$μ$s), eliminating all $>$50\,$μ$s~excursions.
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