Real-time inter-process communication in heterogeneous programming environments

In a complex real-time application, each module can be independently developed, therefore, different processes need to communicate with each other safely and as quickly as possible. This paper proposes a flexible and efficient solution for handling the inter-process communication and for helping the programmer to quickly create modules that use the producer-consumer paradigm in order to streamline the data flow between the different processes. The communication is performed by means of a first-in first-out circular buffer which is kept in a shared memory area in order to allow quick data transfer between modules. The proposed solution allows the development of complex modularized applications suitable for real-time data processing. We describe the use of the proposed framework in a practical setup practice to as part of a software synchronization mechanism between two acquisition devices: a video capture device and an inertial measurement unit.