Model-Based Engineering of Collaborative Embedded Systems

This Open Access book presents the results of the "Collaborative Embedded Systems" (CrESt) project, aimed at adapting and complementing the methodology underlying modeling techniques developed to cope with the challenges of the dynamic structures of collaborative embedded systems (CESs) based on the SPES development methodology. In order to manage the high complexity of the individual systems and the dynamically formed interaction structures at runtime, advanced and powerful development methods are required that extend the current state of the art in the development of embedded systems and cyber-physical systems. The methodological contributions of the project support the effective and efficient development of CESs in dynamic and uncertain contexts, with special emphasis on the reliability and variability of individual systems and the creation of networks of such systems at runtime. The project was funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), and the case studies are therefore selected from areas that are highly relevant for Germany’s economy (automotive, industrial production, power generation, and robotics). It also supports the digitalization of complex and transformable industrial plants in the context of the German government's "Industry 4.0" initiative, and the project results provide a solid foundation for implementing the German government's high-tech strategy "Innovations for Germany" in the coming years

Proposing a specification structure for complex products in model-based systems engineering (MBSE)

This research work presents a methodological support for the specification of complex products. This is achieved by developing a specification structure in a MBSE environment. The new method draws on success factors of complex product specification, principles of MBSE and the explanatory model of PGE – Product Generation Engineering. For evaluation, the method is applied within a student development project. A high applicability and the realization of novel synergies for coping with continuously increasing product complexity is demonstrated

Perspectives of Nuclear Physics in Europe: NuPECC Long Range Plan 2010

The goal of this European Science Foundation Forward Look into the future of Nuclear Physics is to bring together the entire Nuclear Physics community in Europe to formulate a coherent plan of the best way to develop the field in the coming decade and beyond.<p></p> The primary aim of Nuclear Physics is to understand the origin, evolution, structure and phases of strongly interacting matter, which constitutes nearly 100% of the visible matter in the universe. This is an immensely important and challenging task that requires the concerted effort of scientists working in both theory and experiment, funding agencies, politicians and the public.<p></p> Nuclear Physics projects are often “big science”, which implies large investments and long lead times. They need careful forward planning and strong support from policy makers. This Forward Look provides an excellent tool to achieve this. It represents the outcome of detailed scrutiny by Europe’s leading experts and will help focus the views of the scientific community on the most promising directions in the field and create the basis for funding agencies to provide adequate support.<p></p> The current NuPECC Long Range Plan 2010 “Perspectives of Nuclear Physics in Europe” resulted from consultation with close to 6 000 scientists and engineers over a period of approximately one year. Its detailed recommendations are presented on the following pages. For the interested public, a short summary brochure has been produced to accompany the Forward Look.<p></p&gt

Dagstuhl-Workshop MBEES:

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Élaboration d'une méthodologie de conception des systèmes embarqués basée sur la transformation du modèle fonctionnel de haut niveau vers le prototype virtuel

La croissance rapide des progrès technologiques combinée aux demandes exigeantes de l’industrie entraîne une augmentation de la complexité des systèmes embarqués. Cette complexité impose plusieurs contraintes et critères à respecter pour produire des systèmes compétitifs et robustes. Aussi, les méthodologies de conception ont grandement évolué au cours des dernières années pour encadrer le développement de ces systèmes complexes et assurer leur conformité aux requis initiaux. C’est ainsi que de nouvelles approches basées sur des modèles sont apparues, pour pallier à ces difficultés et maîtriser le niveau de complexité. Mais souvent ces approches basées sur des modèles traitent les aspects fonctionnels et logiciels du système sans prendre en considération les aspects d’exécution sur de réelles plateformes matérielles. Les travaux développés dans le cadre de ce projet de recherche visent à mettre en oeuvre une nouvelle méthodologie de conception des systèmes embarqués. Cette méthodologie permet d’établir un lien entre le niveau fonctionnel des modèles et la plateforme d’exécution matérielle de l’application en question. L’approche développée est basée sur l’utilisation du langage de modélisation AADL pour décrire le comportement logiciel du système embarqué à un haut niveau d’abstraction. Ensuite, une chaîne de transformation automatique convertit le modèle AADL vers un modèle SystemC. Finalement, l’environnement Space Studio est utilisé pour construire un prototype virtuel de la plateforme. Cet environnement permet l’exécution des aspects fonctionnels du système sur des ressources matérielles. Les performances du système peuvent ainsi être validées et raffinées en se basant sur une exploration architecturale de la plateforme matérielle. Une application d’imagerie a été exploitée en tant qu’étude de cas pour expérimenter ce flot. Il s’agit d’une application de décodage vidéo MJPEG (Motion JPEG). Durant l’expérimentation, un modèle AADL de l’application MJPEG a été développé décrivant son comportement fonctionnel. Ensuite, la chaîne de transformation utilisée traduit automatiquement le modèle AADL en un modèle SystemC. Le modèle SystemC a servi comme élément de base représentant l’aspect logiciel dans l’environnement de prototypage virtuel et de conception conjointe Space Studio. L’outil Space Studio s’est montré utile en permettant la création rapide d’un prototype de plateforme matérielle d’exécution, le partitionnement des fonctions logicielles sur des ressources matérielles et la validation et raffinement des performances du système. Les résultats d’expérimentation obtenus furent concluants. La vitesse d’exécution a été visiblement augmentée et le temps pris pour achever la simulation du système a été réduit de 81.86%. En ce qui concerne le taux d’occupation du processeur quant à lui a considérablement diminué, ce qui pourra ainsi diminuer le taux de puissance consommée par les ressources matérielles. Ainsi le traitement de données par unité de temps s’est amélioré 12 fois de plus après le raffinement porté sur l’assignement des fonctions logicielles sur la plateforme matérielle. Dans le cadre de ce projet, un article scientifique a été publié (Benyoussef et al., Février 2014) à la conférence ERTS 2014 (Embedded Real Time Software and Systems). Ce travail présente le contexte et la problématique liée aux méthodologies basées sur des modèles, la nouvelle approche de modélisation développée ainsi qu’une preuve de concept avec une application de décodage MJPEG

Quality of Service Aware Data Stream Processing for Highly Dynamic and Scalable Applications

Huge amounts of georeferenced data streams are arriving daily to data stream management systems that are deployed for serving highly scalable and dynamic applications. There are innumerable ways at which those loads can be exploited to gain deep insights in various domains. Decision makers require an interactive visualization of such data in the form of maps and dashboards for decision making and strategic planning. Data streams normally exhibit fluctuation and oscillation in arrival rates and skewness. Those are the two predominant factors that greatly impact the overall quality of service. This requires data stream management systems to be attuned to those factors in addition to the spatial shape of the data that may exaggerate the negative impact of those factors. Current systems do not natively support services with quality guarantees for dynamic scenarios, leaving the handling of those logistics to the user which is challenging and cumbersome. Three workloads are predominant for any data stream, batch processing, scalable storage and stream processing. In this thesis, we have designed a quality of service aware system, SpatialDSMS, that constitutes several subsystems that are covering those loads and any mixed load that results from intermixing them. Most importantly, we natively have incorporated quality of service optimizations for processing avalanches of geo-referenced data streams in highly dynamic application scenarios. This has been achieved transparently on top of the codebases of emerging de facto standard best-in-class representatives, thus relieving the overburdened shoulders of the users in the presentation layer from having to reason about those services. Instead, users express their queries with quality goals and our system optimizers compiles that down into query plans with an embedded quality guarantee and leaves logistic handling to the underlying layers. We have developed standard compliant prototypes for all the subsystems that constitutes SpatialDSMS

An Empirical Investigation of Using Models During Requirements Engineering in the Automotive Industry

Context:The automotive industry is undergoing a major transformation from a manufacturing industry towards an industry that relies heavily on software. As one of the main factors for project success, requirements engineering (RE) plays a major role in this transition. Similar to other areas of automotive engineering, the use of models during RE has been suggested to increase productivity and tackle increasing complexity by means of abstraction. Existing modelling frameworks often prescribe a variety of different, formal models for RE, trying to maximise the benefit obtained from model-based engineering (MBE). However, these frameworks are typically based on assumptions from anecdotal evidence and experience, without empirical data supporting these assumptions.Objective:The overall aim of our research is to investigate the potential benefits and drawbacks of using model-based RE in an automotive environment based on empirical evidence. To do so, we present an investigation of the current industrial practice of MBE in the automotive industry, existing challenges in automotive RE, and potential use cases for model-based RE. Furthermore, we explore two use cases for model-based RE, namely the creation of behavioural requirements models for validation and verification purposes and the use of existing trace models to support communication.Method:We address the aims of this thesis using three empirical strategies: case study, design science and survey. We collected quantitative and qualitative data using interviews as well as questionnaires.Results:Our results show that using models during automotive RE can be beneficial, if restricted to certain aspects of RE. In particular, models supporting communication and stakeholder interaction are promising. We show that the use of abstract models of behavioural requirements are considered beneficial for system testing purposes, even though they abstract from the detailed functional requirements. Furthermore, we demonstrate that existing data can be understood as a model to uncover dependencies between stakeholders. Conclusions:Our results question the feasibility to construct and maintain large amounts of formal models for RE. Instead, models during RE should be used for a few, important use cases. Additionally, MBE can be used as a means to understand existing problems in software engineering

Model-based resource analysis and synthesis of service-oriented automotive software architectures

Context Automotive software architectures describe distributed functionality by an interaction of software components. One drawback of today\u27s architectures is their strong integration into the onboard communication network based on predefined dependencies at design time. The idea is to reduce this rigid integration and technological dependencies. To this end, service-oriented architecture offers a suitable methodology since network communication is dynamically established at run-time. Aim We target to provide a methodology for analysing hardware resources and synthesising automotive service-oriented architectures based on platform-independent service models. Subsequently, we focus on transforming these models into a platform-specific architecture realisation process following AUTOSAR Adaptive. Approach For the platform-independent part, we apply the concepts of design space exploration and simulation to analyse and synthesise deployment configurations, i. e., mapping services to hardware resources at an early development stage. We refine these configurations to AUTOSAR Adaptive software architecture models representing the necessary input for a subsequent implementation process for the platform-specific part. Result We present deployment configurations that are optimal for the usage of a given set of computing resources currently under consideration for our next generation of E/E architecture. We also provide simulation results that demonstrate the ability of these configurations to meet the run time requirements. Both results helped us to decide whether a particular configuration can be implemented. As a possible software toolchain for this purpose, we finally provide a prototype. Conclusion The use of models and their analysis are proper means to get there, but the quality and speed of development must also be considered