Feature: Embedded
as diverse as automotive, electronics, metals and plastics, consumer goods, e-commerce/retail and healthcare. The company, therefore, has a large number of development teams working on different projects, each with unique hardware/ software and functional safety requirements. Helping the company’s development teams decide on which
C or C++ language version, compiler and library combination to use is one of the tasks of Kuka’s Competence Center for Functional Safety. If and when the CPU architecture changes, a lot might have to be done in software for the new compiler back end to support it. SuperTest can assist here, by assessing available compilers. Part of that assessment ensures functional safety, which is very important for robots, and critical in the development of collaborative robots (cobots) that work in close proximity to humans. For the functional safety of machinery and safety-related
systems, compliance with standards such as IEC 62061 and IEC 61508 is also important. These standards are different from those in the automotive industry, but, similarly, require high-level quality measures and tool qualifications. Among other things, meeting these standards for a specific project means Kuka must qualify the compilers it plans to use. SuperTest recommends to Kuka’s project team which program
Compiler and library selection for functional safety in
advanced robots By Marcel Beemster, CTO, Solid Sands
M
any companies use SuperTest by Solid Sands to qualify their compiler or library. However, for automation company Kuka, SuperTest is also a decision-making tool that helps its development teams decide which
C/C++ compiler and standard library to use for each project.
Robotics by Kuka Headquartered in Augsburg, Germany, Kuka is one of the world’s leading suppliers of intelligent automation solutions, ranging from static and mobile robots and manufacturing cells to fully-automated, networked robotic systems for industries
24 May 2022
www.electronicsworld.co.uk
language to choose; for example, GCC or Clang, or something else. GCC is a program language compiler developed by GNU; Clang is a C, C++, Objective-C, or Objective-C++ compiler that is compiled in C++ based on LLVM and released under the Apache 2.0 license – mainly used to provide performance superior to that of GCC. SuperTest also helped the Kuka teams decide whether to
upgrade to a newer version of a compiler. Newer versions may have features more suitable to specific projects and, in addition to testing these new features, SuperTest can also determine if there are any disadvantages. By evaluating a new standard library, SuperTest can determine if its behaviour is similar to the library used before. Kuka also uses SuperTest to determine which C or C++ language variant a project should use with a chosen compiler. Kuka used SuperTest to check whether there are any
problems moving to a newer language standard – for example, moving from an older version of C++ with a given compiler to a newer version with more functions. It had allowed Kuka teams to establish how well the compiler fares with new standards, and determine if any problems might need fixing beforehand.
SuperTest integration SuperTest is one of many different tools Kuka has integrated into its compiler qualification tool chain. Integrating SuperTest is simple, since it only takes scripting around it and calling all the executables from the command line – all that’s needed is to supply the configuration data. This makes the process heavily automated; most of the manual involvement is in analysing the results. Kuka also appreciated Solid Sands’s technical support,
discussing advice and solutions with team members who know their product, proving a great time saver.
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