Agile Requirement Engineering for a Cloud System for Automated and Networked Vehicles

This paper presents a methodology for the agile development of a cloud system in a multi-partner project centered around automated vehicles. Besides providing an external environment model as an additional input to the automation, the cloud system is also the main gateway for users to interact with automated vehicles through applications on mobile devices. Multiple factors are posing a challenge in our context. Coordination becomes especially challenging, as stakeholders are spread among different locations with backgrounds from various domains. Furthermore, automated vehicles for different applications, such as delivery or taxi services, give rise to a large number of use cases that our cloud system has to support. For our agile development process, we use standardized templates for the description of use-cases, which are initialized from storyboards and iteratively refined by stakeholders. These use-case templates are subsequently transformed into machine-readable specifications, which allows for generation of REST APIs for our cloud system

RobotKube: Orchestrating Large-Scale Cooperative Multi-Robot Systems with Kubernetes and ROS

Modern cyber-physical systems (CPS) such as Cooperative Intelligent Transport Systems (C-ITS) are increasingly defined by the software which operates these systems. In practice, microservice architectures can be employed, which may consist of containerized microservices running in a cluster comprised of robots and supporting infrastructure. These microservices need to be orchestrated dynamically according to ever changing requirements posed at the system. Additionally, these systems are embedded in DevOps processes aiming at continually updating and upgrading both the capabilities of CPS components and of the system as a whole. In this paper, we present RobotKube, an approach to orchestrating containerized microservices for large-scale cooperative multi-robot CPS based on Kubernetes. We describe how to automate the orchestration of software across a CPS, and include the possibility to monitor and selectively store relevant accruing data. In this context, we present two main components of such a system: an event detector capable of, e.g., requesting the deployment of additional applications, and an application manager capable of automatically configuring the required changes in the Kubernetes cluster. By combining the widely adopted Kubernetes platform with the Robot Operating System (ROS), we enable the use of standard tools and practices for developing, deploying, scaling, and monitoring microservices in C-ITS. We demonstrate and evaluate RobotKube in an exemplary and reproducible use case that we make publicly available at https://github.com/ika-rwth-aachen/robotkube .Comment: 7 pages, 2 figures, 2 tables; Accepted to be published as part of the 26th IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITSC), Bilbao, Spain, September 24-28, 202

Fast-exchanging spirocyclic rhodamine probes for aptamer-based super-resolution RNA imaging

Live-cell RNA imaging with high spatial and temporal resolution remains a major challenge. Here we report the development of RhoBAST:SpyRho, a fluorescent light-up aptamer (FLAP) system ideally suited for visualizing RNAs in live or fixed cells with various advanced fluorescence microscopy modalities. Overcoming problems associated with low cell permeability, brightness, fluorogenicity, and signal-to-background ratio of previous fluorophores, we design a novel probe, SpyRho (Spirocyclic Rhodamine), which tightly binds to the RhoBAST aptamer. High brightness and fluorogenicity is achieved by shifting the equilibrium between spirolactam and quinoid. With its high affinity and fast ligand exchange, RhoBAST:SpyRho is a superb system for both super-resolution SMLM and STED imaging. Its excellent performance in SMLM and the first reported super-resolved STED images of specifically labeled RNA in live mammalian cells represent significant advances over other FLAPs. The versatility of RhoBAST:SpyRho is further demonstrated by imaging endogenous chromosomal loci and proteins

UNICARagil - Disruptive Modular Architectures for Agile, Automated Vehicle Concepts

This paper introduces UNICARagil, a collaborative project carried out by a consortium of seven German universities and six industrial partners, with funding provided by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research of Germany. In the scope of this project, disruptive modular structures for agile, automated vehicle concepts are researched and developed. Four prototype vehicles of different characteristics based on the same modular platform are going to be build up over a period of four years. The four fully automated and driverless vehicles demonstrate disruptive architectures in hardware and software, as well as disruptive concepts in safety, security, verification and validation. This paper outlines the most important research questions underlying the project

Automation of the UNICARagil Vehicles

The German research project UNICARagil is a collaboration between eight universities and six industrial partners funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research. It aims to develop innovative modular architectures and methods for new agile, automated vehicle concepts. This paper summarizes the automation approach of the driverless vehicle concept and its modular realization within the four demonstration vehicles to be built by the consortium. On-board each vehicle, this comprises sensor modules for environment perception and modelling, motion planning for normal driving and safe halts, as well as the respective control algorithms and base functionalities like precise localization. A control room and cloud functionalities provide off-board support to the vehicles, which are additionally addressed in this paper