Looking at novel technologies that step-by-step are coming into our lives, we can be impressed by the results, by the possibilities new products offer, and by the way they slowly change our lives as well. These networked technologies are often communicating continuously with other systems and have a certain degree of autonomy for taking decisions. Such “Cyber Physical Systems” (CPS), with sometimes the human in the loop, pose real challenges to industries. Looking from a systems design point of view, such new technologies tend to increase the complexity a designer or an engineer needs to manage. Characterised by multiplicity, by interdependence, by a certain degree of heterogeneity, with continuous interactions, and overall with a product or system behaviour that is difficult to predict, such systems, such systems are also difficult to validate. And, if it concerns safety-critical embedded systems, to get those systems certified.
Still, this is a road that is taken, and when looking for example at autonomous vehicles of autonomous drones, such technologies are being considered, so to be able to cover the stakeholder requirements, or more in general the expectations from our society. So, what to do about them… This presentation aims at analysing the challenges and to propose a methodology to support the design process. Starting from a new value-based approach to system design and engineering, research directions are suggested for the coming years, so to be able to prepare the future
