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Trans-Atlantic Robots
An anonymous reader writes "In the summer of 2008, teams from a host of countries will compete in The Microtransat Challenge with the hope of gaining the honor of having built the first autonomous sailboat to cross the Atlantic. The results of Microtransat 2007, a smaller scale preliminary race, were recently announced. The winner was the team from Austria; team RoBoat, for having completed 24 hours of autonomous sailing. I am strongly considering joining this competition before the year is out, and would appreciate any insight from the Slashdot community. The boats can be up to 4 meters in length, and therefore capable of carrying a full-sized onboard computer (operating system of your choice). Time is limited however, so I would like to avoid as many hardware issues as possible and get straight to the difficult problem of writing the AI. So how would you design a seamless interface between sensors and actuators to the high-level code?"
I'm always very fond of Linux because it seems to provide better raw access to system devices (serial and usb ports etc)
However, the ultimate question comes down to this: does the gear you have to interface with already have some kind of driver developed for it, or do you have to write the interface to those as well?
If its all serial, I would go with Linux. If it requires a driver and a Linux driver is available, I would still go with Linux.
We don't have much to go on here. I've seen people turn Linux boxes into coffee machines on crack (I think there is a man page out there somewhere) and other home automation systems that basically just use relays and a few other custom made components. Give us more details on your specific equipment and maybe you'll get better answers.