Towards an Integrated Conceptual Design Evaluation of Mechatronic Systems: The SysDICE Approach

National audienceMechatronic systems play a significant role in different types of industry, especially in trans- portation, aerospace, automotive and manufacturing. Although their multidisciplinary nature provides enormous functionalities, it is still one of the substantial challenges which frequently impede their design process. Notably, the conceptual design phase aggregates various engi- neering disciplines, project and business management fields, where different methods, modeling languages and software tools are applied. Therefore, an integrated environment is required to intimately engage the different domains together. This paper outlines a model-based research approach for an integrated conceptual design evaluation of mechatronic systems using SysML. Particularly, the state of the art is highlighted, most important challenges, remaining problems in this field and a novel solution is proposed, named SysDICE, combining model based system engineering and artificial intelligence techniques to support for achieving efficient design

Collaborative Verification-Driven Engineering of Hybrid Systems

Hybrid systems with both discrete and continuous dynamics are an important model for real-world cyber-physical systems. The key challenge is to ensure their correct functioning w.r.t. safety requirements. Promising techniques to ensure safety seem to be model-driven engineering to develop hybrid systems in a well-defined and traceable manner, and formal verification to prove their correctness. Their combination forms the vision of verification-driven engineering. Often, hybrid systems are rather complex in that they require expertise from many domains (e.g., robotics, control systems, computer science, software engineering, and mechanical engineering). Moreover, despite the remarkable progress in automating formal verification of hybrid systems, the construction of proofs of complex systems often requires nontrivial human guidance, since hybrid systems verification tools solve undecidable problems. It is, thus, not uncommon for development and verification teams to consist of many players with diverse expertise. This paper introduces a verification-driven engineering toolset that extends our previous work on hybrid and arithmetic verification with tools for (i) graphical (UML) and textual modeling of hybrid systems, (ii) exchanging and comparing models and proofs, and (iii) managing verification tasks. This toolset makes it easier to tackle large-scale verification tasks

Soporte automático para la generación de perfiles UML asociados a la definición modelos de safety

Tesis (Ingeniero Civil Informático)En el desarrollo de software críticos para la seguridad, se consideró como alternativa para documentar o diseñar las pruebas de seguridad en base al desarrollo dirigido por modelo (MDE), ya que es una herramienta utilizada en varios ámbitos de la ingeniería y tiene argumentos sólidos que permite definir con mayor solidez modelos de dominio. En este ámbito se utilizan metamodelos para definir el diseño de la aplicación, perfiles UML para diseñar los conceptos específicos que no son considerados por el lenguaje unificado de modelado (UML), permitiendo definir de manera íntegra la aplicación o dominio que se desea certificar. Sumado al diseño de la aplicación se debe considerar el o los estándares internacionales presentes, garantizando las propiedades necesarias de la aplicación, reduciendo el riesgo para los usuarios. La totalidad de la definición de la aplicación en la actualidad se genera de forma manual, lo que requiere un gran esfuerzo y de varios especialistas conectados (ingenieros, especialistas del estándar, entre otros). Con el presente trabajo se pretende reducir ese esfuerzo automatizando la generación de perfiles de acuerdo al estándar IEC 61508. Sin embargo, se puede interpolar a cualquier estándar ya que son derivados del estándar mencionado

A Systematic Approach to Constructing Incremental Topology Control Algorithms Using Graph Transformation

Communication networks form the backbone of our society. Topology control algorithms optimize the topology of such communication networks. Due to the importance of communication networks, a topology control algorithm should guarantee certain required consistency properties (e.g., connectivity of the topology), while achieving desired optimization properties (e.g., a bounded number of neighbors). Real-world topologies are dynamic (e.g., because nodes join, leave, or move within the network), which requires topology control algorithms to operate in an incremental way, i.e., based on the recently introduced modifications of a topology. Visual programming and specification languages are a proven means for specifying the structure as well as consistency and optimization properties of topologies. In this paper, we present a novel methodology, based on a visual graph transformation and graph constraint language, for developing incremental topology control algorithms that are guaranteed to fulfill a set of specified consistency and optimization constraints. More specifically, we model the possible modifications of a topology control algorithm and the environment using graph transformation rules, and we describe consistency and optimization properties using graph constraints. On this basis, we apply and extend a well-known constructive approach to derive refined graph transformation rules that preserve these graph constraints. We apply our methodology to re-engineer an established topology control algorithm, kTC, and evaluate it in a network simulation study to show the practical applicability of our approachComment: This document corresponds to the accepted manuscript of the referenced journal articl

Systems engineering languages for modeling and analyzing supervisory control structures in cyber-physical systems

In today’s world, a new generation of high-tech cyber-physical systems are becoming an integral part of our societies and their impact is only going to increase within the next years. Because of their importance, the companies that develop these systems use proper systems engineering modeling tools to help with the design and development of these types of systems and to accelerate the whole development process. In this thesis, 4 very popular modeling tools/languages are being tested and evaluated in terms of their capabilities for model-based systems engineering. These tools are Simulink&Stateflow from MATLAB, Modelica, MechatronicUML and SysML. In order to do that, a proper introduction of the systems engineering process is presented to set the criteria in which the different tools/lan- guages will be evaluated. To support the evaluation process, a case study is presented with the CIF3 language that will be attempted with all the other languages/tools. Each modeling lan- guage/tool has been evaluated individually at first and then together with the others in the end. In addition to the first evaluation, a proper basic introduction of all the modeling concepts that each tool uses for modeling cyber-physical systems is provided and the building of the case study as well. After that, in the second evaluation, the languages are extensively compared against each other in terms of all the criteria set previously to see exactly the scope of capabilities that each tools has. As a result from the two evaluations, a definitive review for each language/tool is presented addressing their overall scope of capabilities, main strong features, main uses, possible ways of improving and future development.Outgoin