Design of testbed and emulation tools

The research summarized was concerned with the design of testbed and emulation tools suitable to assist in projecting, with reasonable accuracy, the expected performance of highly concurrent computing systems on large, complete applications. Such testbed and emulation tools are intended for the eventual use of those exploring new concurrent system architectures and organizations, either as users or as designers of such systems. While a range of alternatives was considered, a software based set of hierarchical tools was chosen to provide maximum flexibility, to ease in moving to new computers as technology improves and to take advantage of the inherent reliability and availability of commercially available computing systems

On Modelling and Analysis of Dynamic Reconfiguration of Dependable Real-Time Systems

This paper motivates the need for a formalism for the modelling and analysis of dynamic reconfiguration of dependable real-time systems. We present requirements that the formalism must meet, and use these to evaluate well established formalisms and two process algebras that we have been developing, namely, Webpi and CCSdp. A simple case study is developed to illustrate the modelling power of these two formalisms. The paper shows how Webpi and CCSdp represent a significant step forward in modelling adaptive and dependable real-time systems.Comment: Presented and published at DEPEND 201

Structured Mapping of Petri Net States and Events for FPGA Implementations

The paper presents a new method of structured encoding of global internal states and events in Reconfigurable Logic Controllers, which are directly mapped into Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGA). Modular, concurrently decomposed, colored state machine is chosen as a intermediate model, before the mapping of Petri net into an array structure of dedicated but very flexible and reliable digital system. The initial textual specification in formal Gentzen logic serves both as a design description for a rapid prototyping, as well as formal model, suitable for detailed computer-based reasoning about optimized and synthesized logic controller, implemented in configurable hardware. Only the selected linear subset from general, universal propositional Gentzen Logic is necessary to deduce several properties of the net, such as relations of nonconcurrency among structurally ordered macroplaces. The goal of this paper is to present the design methodology for modeling and synthesis of discrete controllers using related Petri net theory, rule-based theory (mathematical logic), and VHDL

Beta: Bioprinting engineering technology for academia

Higher STEM education is a field of growing potential, but too many middle school and high school students are not testing proficiently in STEM subjects. The BETA team worked to improve biology classroom engagement through the development of technologies for high school biology experiments. The BETA project team expanded functionality of an existing product line to allow for better student and teacher user experience and the execution of more interesting experiments. The BETA project’s first goal was to create a modular incubating Box for the high school classroom. This Box, called the BETA Box was designed with a variety of sensors to allow for custom temperature and lighting environments for each experiment. It was completed with a clear interface to control the settings and an automatic image capture system. The team also conducted a feasibility study on auto calibration and dual-extrusion for SE3D’s existing 3D bioprinter. The findings of this study led to the incorporation of a force sensor for auto calibration and the evidence to support the feasibility of dual extrusion, although further work is needed. These additions to the current SE3D educational product line will increase effectiveness in the classroom and allow the target audience, high school students, to better engage in STEM education activities

Arcadia, a software development environment research project

The research objectives of the Arcadia project are two-fold: discovery and development of environment architecture principles and creation of novel software development tools, particularly powerful analysis tools, which will function within an environment built upon these architectural principles.Work in the architecture area is concerned with providing the framework to support integration while also supporting the often conflicting goal of extensibility. Thus, this area of research is directed toward achieving external integration by providing a consistent, uniform user interface, while still admitting customization and addition of new tools and interface functions. In an effort to also attain internal integration, research is aimed at developing mechanisms for structuring and managing the tools and data objects that populate a software development environment, while facilitating the insertion of new kinds of tools and new classes of objects.The unifying theme of work in the tools area is support for effective analysis at every stage of a software development project. Research is directed toward tools suitable for analyzing pre-implementation descriptions of software, software itself, and towards the production of testing and debugging tools. In many cases, these tools are specifically tailored for applicability to concurrent, distributed, or real-time software systems.The initial focus of Arcadia research is on creating a prototype environment, embodying the architectural principles, which supports Ada1 software development. This prototype environment is itself being developed in Ada.Arcadia is being developed by a consortium of researchers from the University of California at Irvine, the University of Colorado at Boulder, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, TRW, Incremental Systems Corporation, and The Aerospace Corporation. This paper delineates the research objectives and describes the approaches being taken, the organization of the research endeavor, and current status of the work

A compositional method for the synthesis of asynchronous communication mechanisms

Asynchronous data communication mechanisms (ACMs) have been extensively studied as data connectors between independently timed concurrent processes. In previous work, an automatic ACM synthesis method based on the generation of the reachability graph and the theory of regions was proposed. In this paper, we propose a new synthesis method based on the composition of Petri net modules, avoiding the exploration of the reachability graph. The behavior of ACMs is formally defined and correctness properties are specified in CTL. Model checking is used to verify the correctness of the Petri net models. The algorithms to generate the Petri net models are presented. Finally, a method to automatically generate C++ source code from the Petri net model is described.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Reliability models for dataflow computer systems

The demands for concurrent operation within a computer system and the representation of parallelism in programming languages have yielded a new form of program representation known as data flow (DENN 74, DENN 75, TREL 82a). A new model based on data flow principles for parallel computations and parallel computer systems is presented. Necessary conditions for liveness and deadlock freeness in data flow graphs are derived. The data flow graph is used as a model to represent asynchronous concurrent computer architectures including data flow computers

Robot Composite Learning and the Nunchaku Flipping Challenge

Advanced motor skills are essential for robots to physically coexist with humans. Much research on robot dynamics and control has achieved success on hyper robot motor capabilities, but mostly through heavily case-specific engineering. Meanwhile, in terms of robot acquiring skills in a ubiquitous manner, robot learning from human demonstration (LfD) has achieved great progress, but still has limitations handling dynamic skills and compound actions. In this paper, we present a composite learning scheme which goes beyond LfD and integrates robot learning from human definition, demonstration, and evaluation. The method tackles advanced motor skills that require dynamic time-critical maneuver, complex contact control, and handling partly soft partly rigid objects. We also introduce the "nunchaku flipping challenge", an extreme test that puts hard requirements to all these three aspects. Continued from our previous presentations, this paper introduces the latest update of the composite learning scheme and the physical success of the nunchaku flipping challenge

A Modeling Framework for Schedulability Analysis of Distributed Avionics Systems

This paper presents a modeling framework for schedulability analysis of distributed integrated modular avionics (DIMA) systems that consist of spatially distributed ARINC-653 modules connected by a unified AFDX network. We model a DIMA system as a set of stopwatch automata (SWA) in UPPAAL to analyze its schedulability by classical model checking (MC) and statistical model checking (SMC). The framework has been designed to enable three types of analysis: global SMC, global MC, and compositional MC. This allows an effective methodology including (1) quick schedulability falsification using global SMC analysis, (2) direct schedulability proofs using global MC analysis in simple cases, and (3) strict schedulability proofs using compositional MC analysis for larger state space. The framework is applied to the analysis of a concrete DIMA system.Comment: In Proceedings MARS/VPT 2018, arXiv:1803.0866