Page 32 - PDA Robotics Using Your Personal Digital Assistant to Control Your Robot

PDA 01 5/30/03 9:09 AM Page 9
Chapter 1 / Anatomy of a Personal Digital Assistant (PDA)
from one device to another without any cables. For example, if
both your laptop computer and printer have IrDA ports, you can
simply put your computer in front of the printer and output a doc-
ument, without needing to connect the two with a cable.
IrDA ports support roughly the same transmission rates as tradi-
tional parallel ports. The only restrictions on their use are that
the two devices must be within a few feet of each other, and there
must be a clear line of sight between them. The IrDA port on the
PDA will be the main communication link to PDA-Bot; in
essence, it will be the spinal cord. PDA Robot responds to IrDA
discovery requests and identifies itself as “generic IrDA.” I decid-
ed to use an IrDA data link to the Robot because it is a very reli-
able communication link (error correction is built into it) that
requires absolutely no cables!
See: Chapter 4: Infrared Communications Overview, PDA Bot IR
transponder.
• Channel 3: Universal asynchronous receiver-transmitter (UART):
Intel provides a development board for the StrongARM SA-1100
microprocessors. It is interesting to note that most PDAs using
the StrongARM are almost identical in function to that of the
development board.

Increasingly, ARM-based microprocessors are being used in Palm OS
devices such as the Tungsten (see Figure 1.5). It has a Texas Instruments
OMAP1510 processor (an enhanced ARM-based processor).

The OMAP1510 processor includes the following:
• TI-enhanced ARM9 up to 175 MHz (maximum frequency).

• TMS320C55x DSP up to 200 MHz (maximum frequency).
• Voltage: 1.5v nominal.

• Optimized software architecture that allows designers to leverage
dual processing, and provides a complete and seamless software
foundation.

• DSP/BIOS Bridge that provides a seamless interface to the DSP
using standard APIs allowing easy access to DSP multimedia
algorithms.

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