[Vm-dev] PhD Position on Dynamic Reflective Language Integration with FPGAs for Robotic Applications

jannik laval jannik.laval at gmail.com
Mon Jan 20 20:01:54 UTC 2014


The position is available now. Interested candidates may apply as soon as
possible.

*Title:* Ph.D. Student Position on Dynamic Reflective Language Integration
with FPGAs for Robotic Applications

*Location:* Mines de Douai and ENSTA Brest (France)

*Advisor and contacts:*
Noury Bouraqadi (noury.bouraqadi at mines-douai.fr)
Luc Fabresse (luc.fabresse at mines-douai.fr)
Loïc Lagadec (loic.lagadec at ensta-bretagne.fr)
Jannik Laval (jannik.laval at mines-douai.fr)

*Profile:* the candidate must must hold a recent Master of Science degree
in Computer Science or Software Engineering and must have solid skills in
dynamic reflective language (Smalltalk).

*Description of the work:*
The goal of this PhD is to study Smalltalk integration with FPGAs for
robotic applications. This integration will enable us get the best from
both worlds. Developers are provided with a high-level dynamic reflective
language (Smalltalk) for building and debugging their applications. Still,
we can have high performances by projecting part of the programs into
FPGAs. These reconfigurable hardware chips can achieve performance faster
than C programs, while consuming much less energy.

The work to do can decompose into the following tasks:
-Build reference robotic applications fully in Pharo Smalltalk using actual
robots (see http://car.mines-douai.fr/robots/)
-Analyze these applications to identify critical parts to project on FPGAs
to significantly increase performances (speed, energy)
-Do the actual projection to FPGA and evaluate performances of the
transformed applications
-Generalize the approach and define a methodology for turning Smalltalk
code into FPGA
-Propose a solution to automate the methodology

The Ph.D student will receive a grant which net amount is approximately
1420 euros per month for 3 years (36 months).
He will be co-supervised by Loïc Lagadec from the ENSTA-Bretagne
(Lab-STICC, Brest) and Jannik Laval, Luc Fabresse and Noury Bouraqadi from
Ecole des Mines de Douai (CAR, http://car.mines-douai.fr/).
The first 18th month will be spent in Douai (Lille area), while the last
half of the PhD will be spent in Brest.
However, during the full 3 years, there will be a strong interaction with
co-supervisers from both labs.

*Bibliography:*
-A Robust Layered Control System For A Mobile Robot. R. Brooks. IEEE
Journal of Robotics and Automation. Vol. 2. Num 1. March, 1985.
-RCS: A Cognitive Architecture for Intelligent MultiAgent Systems. J.S.
Albus and A. J. Barbera. Proceedings of the 5th IFAC/EURON Symposium on
Intelligent Autonomous Vehicles (IAV 2004). Lisbon, Portugal, 2004.
-Handbook of Robotics. Bruno Siciliano and Oussama Khatib editors.
Springer. 2008.
-Multi-Level Simulation of Heterogeneous Reconfigurable Platforms. D.
Picard and L. Lagadec. International Journal of Reconfigurable Computing.
2012.
-High-level synthesis for FPGAs: From Prototyping to Deployment. Jason cong
and stephen neuendorffer and juanjo noguera and kees vissers and zhiru
zhang. IEEE Transactions on Computer-aided design of integrated circuits
and systems. Vol. 30. Num 4. April, 2011.
-The MOLEN Polymorphic Processor. S. Vassiliadis and S. Wong and G.
Gaydadjiev and K. Bertels and G. Kuzmanov and E. Moscu Panainte. IEEE
Transactions on Computers. 2004.

-- 

~~Jannik Laval~~
École des Mines de Douai
Enseignant-chercheur
http://www.jannik-laval.eu
http://car.mines-douai.fr/
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