Real-time systems must respond quickly to inputs from the environment in order to work effectively and safely, and realtime operating systems (RTOS) are a critical part of such systems. In this course the student is exposed to basic RTOS concepts like tasks, scheduling algorithms, RTOS customisation and concurrent real-time programming. By the end of this course a student will not only understand how an RTOS is built, but will also gain practical hands-on experience in customising RTOSs and in writing real-time programs.
This module teaches us RTOS concepts and apply them through a project. In the project, we were tasked to program a KL25Z board to run several threads on our bot, such as powering motors, playing music through a buzzer, controlling LEDs, and obtaining readings from the Ultrasonic Sensor. The bot is then remote controlled through wireless serial communication from a mobile phone app to an ESP32 board. We also had to set up a self-drive mode where the bot has to move forward till it detects a cone, make a loop around it, then move back to the starting point.