ViewCorrect: Predictable Co-Design for distributed embedded mechatronic control systems (TES.7020)

The purpose of the proposed research is to provide methodological support, including (prototype) tools, for the predictable design of distributed hard real-time embedded control systems for mechatronic products. The methodology consists of three major components: views, multidisciplinary core models and correctnesspreserving code generation. The views allow designers from different engineering disciplines to interactively and concurrently work on the design of the complete system, while each team member can observe and understand the impact of other one's design decisions through its own, well-known view. The different views are translated into multidisciplinary core models. The interaction between the core models will be realized by co-simulation, allowing for verification as well as for consistency checking between the different design views. Views representing software components are mapped automatically onto the target hardware platform in a correctness-preserving way. This means that the properties exhibited by the views are kept in the software realization. With this methodology we aim to relax the tension between design cost and design time on the one hand and quality (in particular reliability and robustness) on the other hand. The methodology is tried out using several test setups. First at the university, and concurrently, but started a little later, at our industrial partners, Océ and Chess-eT.

Utilization
Near future embedded software for mechatronic products demands more flexibility, reliability, safety and robustness, whereas performance and correctness needs to be of high quality. Those systems will make use of more heterogeneous hardware components, thus needing software that is more heterogeneous.
In this proposal, the application carrier is a mobile mechatronic device. Each industrial partner works on its own case, to test the methods and tools of this project in their own industrial setting. Feedback is in this way more diverse, but coherent enough to provide proper advice to update the methods and tools.
Océ's case is the design of an autonomous finishing unit, which will transport results of remote print jobs as a package to the user's workplace. Chess eT's case is the control of a wheel chair. The essential functionality is power-assisted steering using force feedback for either the wheelchair user or the pusher.
Expected benefits for the industry are at least: (1) a substantial reduction of the design and implementation time and (2) a significant higher quality of the resulting product. Supporting concurrency, better attuned models and a significantly better support to deal with dependabilities are the main drivers for these benefits.
The cases, the two industrial partners will work on, yield the first step to carry over the research results to industry. Working on these cases in the scope of this project allows for feedback from industry to the research, but also assures that the methods and techniques are used by industry. Later on, the case studies function as demonstrators. Furthermore, the knowledge gained in this project can contribute to the development of post-academic education.

Zie ook de website van ViewCorrect.

Er is één andere universiteit bij dit project betrokken.