From UML to SIMULINK CAAM: Formal Specification and Transformation Analysis

UML and Simulink are attractive languages for embedded systems design and modeling. An automatic mapping from UML models to Simulink would be an interesting resource in a seamless design flow, allowing designers to use UML asmodeling language for the whole system and at same time to use facilities for code generation based on Simulink. In a previous work, the UML to Simulink translation was prototyped using a Java implementation. In this paper, we present the formal definition of this translation using graph grammars, as well as its automation, which is supported by the AGG system. With the formalization of the metamodels and translation rules, we can guarantee the correctness of the translation. We also illustrate theeffectiveness of our methodology by means of a case study

Coordinating Aerial Robots and Unattended Ground Sensors for Intelligent Surveillance Systems

Sensor networks are being used to implement different types of sophisticated emerging applications, such as those aimed at supporting ambient intelligence and surveillance systems. This usage is enhanced by employing sensors with different characteristics in terms of sensing, computing and mobility capabilities, working cooperatively in the network. However, the design and deployment of these heterogeneous systems present several issues that have to be handled in order to meet the user expectations. The main problems are related to the nodes‘ interoperability and the overall resource allocation, both inter and intra nodes. The first problem requires a common platform that abstracts the nodes’ heterogeneity and provides a smooth communication, while the second is handled by cooperation mechanisms supported by the platform. Moreover, as the nodes are supposed to be heterogeneous, a customizable platform is required to support both resource rich and poorer nodes. This paper analyses surveillance systems based on a heterogeneous sensor network, which is composed by lowend ground sensor nodes and autonomous aerial robots, i.e. Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), carrying different kinds of sensors. The approach proposed in this work tackles the two above mentioned problems by using a customizable hardware platform and a middleware to support interoperability. Experimental results are also provided

A Logic to Specify and Verify Synchronous Transitions

This paper introduces a formalism named SINC aimed at the design and verification of synchronous concurrent systems. The components of this formalism are a transition system and a first-order linear-time temporal logic. The SINC transition system adopts a synchronous computation model, includes a method to solve write-conflicts, and represents transitions as possibly non-terminating imperative commands. The SINC logic allows for formal reasoning about SINC transition systems using compositional and modular proofs. Such features are important to the verification of a large class of systems, but they are missing in other formalisms based on transition systems and temporal logics. This paper also discusses some of the pragmatics in specifying and verifying systems using SINC, and presents extensions to deal with generic parameters and regular structures. SINC is based on the Hoare logic and the UNITY formalism

A Standardized Co-simulation Backbone

In the field of co-simulation, the construction of a bridge between different simulators and the solution of problems like synchronization and data translation are some of the main challenges. This paper discusses the advantages of the HLA (High Level Architecture) standard to solve these problems and presents a generic architecture to support environments for geographically distributed co-simulation, called Distributed Cosimulation Backbone (DCB), which is based on the HLA. This architecture is very flexible and does not enforce code modifications to the simulators to be integrated into the environment. 1

A Class Library For Manufacturing Systems

This work presents a class library for manufacturing systems that aims at facilitating the construction of simulation models, allowing reuse and speeding up the modeling process. This library implements a modeling approach that differs from the majority of similar works in this area. It is based on the application of well known manufacturing concepts, like production routings and activities. It allows the creation of new simulations faster than other methodologies, since complex translations from the reality to simulated applications are not necessary. The development of this library was validated by modeling the production line of tractor parts. The production line case study, modeled using both Automod and the proposed class library, allowed a quantitative comparison for the validation of this work

Adaptive Reduced Bit-width Instruction Set Architecture (adapt-rISA)

rISA (reduced bit-width Instruction Set Architecture) is an important architectural feature to reduce code size, which continues to be an extremely important concern for low-end embedded systems. rISA reduces code size by expressing parts of the application in terms of low bit-width instructions. ARM-Thumb, ARCcompact and MIPS16/32 are popular examples. With the intent to exploit the dynamically changing "working instruction set" of today's complex software, ARM 11 now comes with two rISAs, which can be interleaved in the application binary. However, it was demonstrated that the code compression achieved by rISA is extremely sensitive on the selected rISA design. Therefore, it is important to design the optimal rISA for a given embedded application. The one optimal rISA per application approach has already been explored by previous works. In this paper, we present a scheme to design a multiple rISA architecture for embedded systems. Our experiments on MiBench report an average of 19% code compression and up to 7% power reduction of instruction memory when compared to previous approaches using only one optimal rISA