A Question

[Purang Abolmaesumi]

Hello All
Here, at the University of British Columbia, we are looking into the design
of a user interface for a medical robotic system we have in the lab.
Basically, the system consists of two computers, one PC and one VXWORKS
operated, and there is a robot which is connected to the VXWORKS machine and
being controlled by that. But, some parts of the control is being done by
the PC by sending data in real-time via internet to the VXWORKS and then the
robot.
So, here is the problem: We would like to have a GUI which gets images from
a frame-grabber installed on the PC and show them on the screen (we have the
C functions right now which are running perfectly), send some data in
real-time to the VXWORKS machine (again, we have the C functions written)
and at the same time, interacts with user.
I have the following questions:
1. Can we use Python for this?
2. Can we call C functions in Python and vice versa easily?
3. How fast is a Python program? Can we use it for a real-time application
like the one we have?
4. If we use TKinter as the GUI, can we use our C functions for the
frame-grabber to show the image on the screen?

We appreciate any suggestions which could help us.

You could contact me directly at : puranga at ece.ubc.ca

Regards
Purang Abolmaesumi
Ph.D. Student
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
The University of British Columbia