Real-Time Coordination Patterns for Advanced Mechatronic Systems

Abstract

Abstract. Innovation in today's mechanical systems is often only possible due to the embedded software. Particularly, the software connects previously isolated systems resulting in, so-called, advanced mechatronic systems. Mechatronic systems are often employed in a safety-critical context, where hazards that are caused by faults in the software have to be prevented. Preferably, this is achieved by already avoiding these faults during development. A major source of faults is the complex coordination between the connected mechatronic systems. In this paper, we present Real-Time Coordination Patterns for advanced mechatronic systems. These patterns formalize proven communication protocols for the coordination between mechatronic systems as reusable entities. Furthermore, our approach exploits the patterns in the decomposition of the system to enable a scalable formal verification for the detection of faults. We illustrate the patterns with examples from different case studies.

A Modelica Coordination Pattern Library for Cyber-Physical Systems

“…However, none of them especially targets the coordination design of cyber-physical systems by providing solutions for safety-critical coordination problems that need to be formally verified. Therefore, in previous work, we developed a new pattern language called RealTime Coordination Patterns [11]. These patterns abstract from application-specific details (e.g., concrete time values and message parameters) and provide general and reusable solutions for commonly coordination design problems.…”

“…We identified eight different patterns so far that, among others, support to synchronize a collaboration, to delegate tasks, and to transmit information under real-time. We listed all our patterns in a catalog [10] and successfully applied our patterns while developing new cyber-physical systems.…”

“…Thus, we presented a catalog of real-time coordination patterns in previous works [11,10] that can be reused to realize the coordination requirements for a cyber-physical system. These design patterns also support parameters which allow some customization, e.g., concrete timing information.…”

“…The contribution of this paper is a Modelica library which formalizes our real-time coordination patterns [10] as easily reusable Modelica classes using our existing coordination library [23]. Furthermore, we present a process for developing by using the library.…”

Generating Functional Mockup Units from Software Specifications

“…The language especially addresses the specification of complex communication protocols with hard real-time requirements [9]. The structure of a mechatronic system is defined by a component-based development approach.…”