Development of an Embedded RTOS Educational Platform Hardware Design and Development

Abstract

A Real-time Operating System (RTOS) is an operating system that effectively manages the hardware resources of an embedded system that requires very precise timing and high reliability.Because of the lack of time and lab facilities, most U.S. Electronic Engineering Technology (EET) programs do not usually offer the course related to embedded real-time systems development or they just emphasize concepts of RTOS and introduce basic theoretic topics in their microcontroller courses.As a result, students who have a good understanding of theory and concepts of RTOS do not have the opportunity to map their knowledge onto real-world implementations.To bridge the gap between conceptual understanding and concrete implementations, an embedded RTOS educational platform has been established for EET students in the Department of Engineering Technology & Industrial Distribution at Texas A&M University as well as in the Engineering Technology program at Northern Kentucky University.This paper only focuses on hardware design and development of the embedded RTOS platform.The laboratory curriculum development and student learning outcomes/feedback will be discussed in more detail in the follow-up manuscript.