toki: A Build- and Test-Platform for Prototyping and Evaluating Operating System Concepts in Real-Time Environments

TL;DR

toki is a platform combining FreeRTOS, open-source tools, and a unified build-test environment to facilitate rapid prototyping and evaluation of real-time operating system concepts in industrial-like settings.

Contribution

It introduces toki, a comprehensive platform that enables efficient prototyping and testing of real-time OS concepts with industrial system architecture fidelity.

Findings

Supports early prototypes up to TRL 7

Provides a unified build and test environment

Facilitates transfer of research to industrial applications

Abstract

Typically, even low-level operating system concepts, such as resource sharing strategies and predictability measures, are evaluated with Linux on PC hardware. This leaves a large gap to real industrial applications. Hence, the direct transfer of the results might be difficult. As a solution, we present toki, a prototyping and evaluation platform based on FreeRTOS and several open-source libraries. toki comes with a unified build- and test-environment based on Yocto and Qemu, which makes it well suited for rapid prototyping. With its architecture chosen similar to production industrial systems, toki provides the ground work to implement early prototypes of real-time systems research results, up to technology readiness level 7, with little effort.