Teaching real-time systems at DIT/UPM

Real-time systems is an important topic in the education of electrical engineers, the more so as the correct operation of many application systems is more and more dependent on their implementation in the form of real-time computer control systems. In spite of this, most electrical engineering curricula do not profit from modern real-time systems theory and techniques, and too often simplistic assumptions are made about the nature and implications of real-time computation. The authors describe their experience in teaching a real-time systems course and laboratory from a modern software engineering perspective. The results are highly positive, and show new ways to deal with this subject in the engineering curriculum.