[GAP] The GNAT-on-Mindstorms project

[Matteo Bordin]

Dear GAP members,

Last summer an intern at AdaCore offices in Paris, Piotr Piwko, worked 
on a port of GNAT to the Lego Mindstorms NXT platform. The goal of the 
GNAT-on-Mindstorms project is to provide an education-oriented 
development platform for high-integrity embedded systems using Ada.

The developed technology relies on an implementation of the OSEK 
operating system: OSEK is an international standard for operating 
systems in the automotive domain. We are currently also considering an 
Ada-only version based on the Ravenscar Profile.

You can find a presentation which summarizes the project, its technical 
goals and the expected benefits of use in an educational context at:

https://www2.adacore.com/gnattracker2/contributions#Labs_Material

(access to your GNAT Tracker account and go to the 
"Contribution/Laboratory Material" section).

We are currently finalizing the technology and documentation. A video 
showing a working demo will be available soon.

We are considering adding the GNAT-on-Mindstorms technology to the GAP 
program. Future enhancement of the technology will largely depend on 
community feedback, so please let us know how you would be interested in 
using Ada and Lego Mindstorms in your courses.

Thanks in advance.

Kind regards,

Matteo Bordin