SmartKit: User-Friendly Robot with Multiple Operating Systems

Mobile robots have become extensively involved in human activities, taking on arduous tasks and providing significant assistance. Robot capabilities have been continuously enhanced, from simple chassis control to path planning and SLAM. Mixed criticality systems enable mobile robots to handle tasks of varying criticality by integrating multiple operating systems, allowing them to accomplish a wide range of tasks. However, besides improving robot computing performance, we should remember that robots are designed to serve humans. Reliability, usability, and affordability are all critical factors for robot design.We introduce SmartKit, a mixed criticality system (MCS) for mobile robots. Leveraging the efficiency in hardware utilization brought by virtualization, SmartKit can execute tasks of different criticality efficiently and securely. This paper will present the software and hardware architecture of SmartKit and provide performance and functionality validation of the robot system.