Incremental Consistency Checking in Delta-oriented UML-Models for Automation Systems

Automation systems exist in many variants and may evolve over time in order to deal with different environment contexts or to fulfill changing customer requirements. This induces an increased complexity during design-time as well as tedious maintenance efforts. We already proposed a multi-perspective modeling approach to improve the development of such systems. It operates on different levels of abstraction by using well-known UML-models with activity, composite structure and state chart models. Each perspective was enriched with delta modeling to manage variability and evolution. As an extension, we now focus on the development of an efficient consistency checking method at several levels to ensure valid variants of the automation system. Consistency checking must be provided for each perspective in isolation, in-between the perspectives as well as after the application of a delta.Comment: In Proceedings FMSPLE 2016, arXiv:1603.0857

Special Session on Industry 4.0

No abstract available

Using formal methods to support testing

Formal methods and testing are two important approaches that assist in the development of high quality software. While traditionally these approaches have been seen as rivals, in recent years a new consensus has developed in which they are seen as complementary. This article reviews the state of the art regarding ways in which the presence of a formal specification can be used to assist testing

The uses of process modeling : a framework for understanding modeling formalisms

There is wide-spread recognition of the urgent need to improve software processes in order to improve the performance of software organizations. Process models are essential in achieving understanding and visibility of processes and are important for other uses including the analysis of processes for improvement. It has been increasingly difficult to compare and evaluate the variety of process modeling formalisms that have appeared in recent years without a clear understanding of precisely for what they will be used. The contribution of this paper is to provide an understanding and a fairly comprehensive catalog of the applications of process modeling for which formalisms may be used. The primary mechanism for doing this is a guided tour of the literature on process modeling supplemented by recent industrial experience. In the paper, basic definitions concerning processes, process descriptions and process modeling are reviewed and then uses of process modeling are surveyed under the following headings: communication among process participants, construction of new processes, control of processes, process· analysis, and process support by automation. Comments are offered on paradigms for process modeling formalisms and directions for future work to permit evolution of a discipline of process engineering are given

Development of an Industry 4.0 Demonstrator Using Sequence Planner and ROS2

In many modern automation solutions, manual off-line programming is being replaced by online algorithms that dynamically perform tasks based on the state of the environment. Complexities of such systems are pushed even further with collaboration among robots and humans, where intelligent machines and learning algorithms are replacing more traditional automation solutions. This chapter describes the development of an industrial demonstrator using a control infrastructure called Sequence Planner (SP), and presents some lessons learned during development. SP is based on ROS2 and it is designed to aid in handling the increased complexity of these new systems using formal models and online planning algorithms to coordinate the actions of robots and other devices. During development, SP can auto generate ROS nodes and message types as well as support continuous validation and testing. SP is also designed with the aim to handle traditional challenges of automation software development such as safety, reliability and efficiency. In this chapter, it is argued that ROS2 together with SP could be an enabler of intelligent automation for the next industrial revolution

A distributed knowledge-based approach to flexible automation : the contract-net framework

Includes bibliographical references (p. 26-29)

Developing a distributed electronic health-record store for India

The DIGHT project is addressing the problem of building a scalable and highly available information store for the Electronic Health Records (EHRs) of the over one billion citizens of India