[AVL-27] Write assignment pages for course

[hatfield-c]

This project is being pivoted to serve as a simulator environment for the real time system's course at UTD (both grad and undergrad).

First, we need top write up the assignment paper that lists out the requirements of the students.

[hatfield-c]

There will be three projects for the RTOS course. The basic goals of each project are as follows:

• 1: Introduce students to the simulator and engine environment, and accomplish some very basic task within it
• 2: Solve a basic navigation and obstacle avoidance problem
• 3: Successfully drive through simulated traffic to a destination

For project 3, 10 points extra credit could be awarded to students with the fastest times whom experience no collisions.

[hatfield-c]

Due to the fact that these projects are geared towards average college students, a significant amount of "hints" will be given in the simulator that would not typically be given in real life. Some examples include:

• Road waypoints to help students keep their ego's in the center of the road
• A simulated pre-processed "lidar" that gives students exact distances to detected obstacles, as well as the type of obstacle detected
• A small resolution "video camera" that is basically the previous lidar system, but in a square, and gives pre-segmented visual data

The interplay between lidar and the camera will be a point of contention, and one or the other may end up being scrapped due to time constraints.

[hatfield-c]

Project 1 should include implementing a round-robin scheduler to carry out the basic tasks.

[hatfield-c]

For the sake of simplicity, the SUMO integration will not presently be considered a part of any assignment. For now, everything should be implemented as simple Unity scripts.

[hatfield-c]

A workaround for the issue of scheduling and parallel processing to simulate the rtos environment:

• Begin execution of a task script
• Find out real time seconds it took to run the script
• Delay any more task executions until an equivalent time has passed in the simulated Unity environment, and only carry out the actions of the task script in the last frame of time

I would also like to find a way to make this time measurement not dependent on the machine (so students with faster computers are not at an advantage). One possibility is to count CPU time for the script, or some other equivalent way to count the instructions per second executed, and then scale the "measured" time of the task such that roughly the same number of frames is allowed to pass on both a fast computer or a slow computer.

[hatfield-c]

This issue is now complete, and will thus be closed.