Design of a simulation environment for laboratory management by robot organizations

This paper describes the basic concepts needed for a simulation environment capable of supporting the design of robot organizations for managing chemical, or similar, laboratories on the planned U.S. Space Station. The environment should facilitate a thorough study of the problems to be encountered in assigning the responsibility of managing a non-life-critical, but mission valuable, process to an organized group of robots. In the first phase of the work, we seek to employ the simulation environment to develop robot cognitive systems and strategies for effective multi-robot management of chemical experiments. Later phases will explore human-robot interaction and development of robot autonomy

Understanding the Elements of Executable Architectures Through a Multi-Dimensional Analysis Framework

The objective of this dissertation study is to conduct a holistic investigation into the elements of executable architectures. Current research in the field of Executable Architectures has provided valuable solution-specific demonstrations and has also shown the value derived from such an endeavor. However, a common theory underlying their applications has been missing. This dissertation develops and explores a method for holistically developing an Executable Architecture Specification (EAS), i.e., a meta-model containing both semantic and syntactic information, using a conceptual framework for guiding data coding, analysis, and validation. Utilization of this method resulted in the description of the elements of executable architecture in terms of a set of nine information interrogatives: an executable architecture information ontology. Once the detail-rich EAS was constructed with this ontology, it became possible to define the potential elements of executable architecture through an intermediate level meta-model. The intermediate level meta-model was further refined into an interrogative level meta-model using only the nine information interrogatives, at a very high level of abstraction

Resource-based modeling and simulation of business processes

International audienceThe simulation-based analysis of business processes (BPs) is a key activity at various phases of the BP lifecycle, from the design phase, to predict the process behavior, down to the execution and improvement phases, to recover from possible performance downgrades and/or improve the process performance. The BP analysis is usually carried out taking as input the BP description in a given BP modeling language. This paper specifically addresses BPs described in BPMN (Business Process Model & Notation) and introduces an approach that exploits both model-driven principles and the DEVS (Discrete Event System Specification) formalism to first annotate the BPMN model with the allocation of task resources described in terms of performance and reliability properties and then transform the annotated BPMN model into a DEVS-based model, which can be eventually executed to get the analysis results of interest. The BPMN annotation is carried out by use of PyBPMN, a lightweight BPMN extension that allows business analysts to specify the allocation of task resources and their properties in terms of both time-related attributes and reliability attributes. The paper overviews the proposed approach and gives the details of the DEVS components that are used to model the behavior of the corresponding BPMN primitives

Adding Executable Context to Executable Architectures: Enabling an Executable Context Simulation Framework (ECSF)

A system that does not stand alone is represented by a complex entity of component combinations that interact with each other to execute a function. In today\u27s interconnected world, systems integrate with other systems - called a system-of-systems infrastructure: a network of interrelated systems that can often exhibit both predictable and unpredictable behavior. The current state-of-the-art evaluation process of these system-of-systems and their community of practitioners in the academic community are limited to static methods focused on defining who is doing what and where. However, to answer the questions of why and how a system operates within complex systems-of-systems interrelationships, a system\u27s architecture and context must be observed over time, its executable architecture, to discern effective predictable and unpredictable behavior. The objective of this research is to determine a method for evaluating a system\u27s executable architecture and assess the contribution and efficiency of the specified system before it is built. This research led to the development of concrete steps that synthesize the observance of the executable architecture, assessment recommendations provided by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Code of Best Practice for Command and Control (C2) Assessment, and the metrics for operational efficiency provided by the Military Missions and Means Framework. Based on the research herein, this synthesis is designed to evaluate and assess system-of-systems architectures in their operational context to provide quantitative results

A Framework for Executable Systems Modeling

Systems Modeling Language (SysML), like its parent language, the Unified Modeling Language (UML), consists of a number of independently derived model languages (i.e. state charts, activity models etc.) which have been co-opted into a single modeling framework. This, together with the lack of an overarching meta-model that supports uniform semantics across the various diagram types, has resulted in a large unwieldy and informal language schema. Additionally, SysML does not offer a built in framework for managing time and the scheduling of time based events in a simulation. In response to these challenges, a number of auxiliary standards have been offered by the Object Management Group (OMG); most pertinent here are the foundational UML subset (fUML), Action language for fUML (Alf), and the UML profile for Modeling and Analysis of Real Time and Embedded Systems (MARTE). However, there remains a lack of a similar treatment of SysML tailored towards precise and formal modeling in the systems engineering domain. This work addresses this gap by offering refined semantics for SysML akin to fUML and MARTE standards, aimed at primarily supporting the development of time based simulation models typically applied for model verification and validation in systems engineering. The result of this work offers an Executable Systems Modeling Language (ESysML) and a prototype modeling tool that serves as an implementation test bed for the ESysML language. Additionally a model development process is offered to guide user appropriation of the provided framework for model building

Integration of a Flat Holonic Form in an HLA Environment

International audienceManagers need to create and sustain internal systems and controls to ensure that their customer focused strategies are being implemented. Companies are currently in a spiral of permanent optimization. Accordingly, many companies turn to their core activity. In this framework, one notices the development of the concept of “industrial partnership”. In this context and to control the customer–supplier relationships (CSR), we proposed a self-organized control model in which all partner entities (customers/suppliers) negotiate to guarantee good quality connections between customers and suppliers. This means meeting customer expectations as closely as possible and respecting supplier capacities. In this proposal, self-organized control is characterized more precisely by an organizational architecture of the flat holonic form type. This flat holonic form is based on the concept of autonomous control entity (ACE). The holonic architecture, the behaviour of an ACE, the interaction mechanisms between ACEs and the self-evaluation supplier process are presented, and then the modelling of ACEs using discrete event system specification (DEVS) is described. An implementation of the simulation of such a system was done via a distributed simulation environment high level architecture (HLA). A case study illustrating the proposed approach is presented

A DSDEVS-Based Model for Verifying Structural Constraints in Dynamic Business Processes

This paper presents a DSDEVS-based model “Dynamic Structure Discrete Event System specification” for modeling and simulating business processes with dynamic structure regarding to different contexts. Consequently, this model, formally, improves the reuse of configurable business processes. Thus, the proposed model allows the analysts to personalize their configurable business processes in a sound manner by verifying a set of structure properties, such as, the lack of synchronization and the deadlock by means of simulation. The implementation was done in DEVS-Suite simulator, which is based on DEVSJAVA models

Parallel and pseudorandom discrete event system specification vs. networks of spiking neurons: Formalization and preliminary implementation results

International audienceUsual Parallel Discrete Event System Specification (P-DEVS) allows specifying systems from modeling to simulation. However, the framework does not incorporate parallel and stochastic simulations. This work intends to extend P-DEVS to parallel simulations and pseudorandom number generators in the context of a spiking neural network. The discrete event specification presented here makes explicit and centralized the parallel computation of events as well as their routing, making further implementations more easy. It is then expected to dispose of a well defined mathematical and computational framework to deal with networks of spiking neurons