Fredrik Asplund

Tool Integration beyond Wasserman

The typical development environment today consists of many specialized development tools, which are partially integrated, forming a complex tool landscape with partial integration. Traditional appr ...

The discourse on tool integration beyond technology, a literature survey

Research strands beyond technology with regard to tool integration were studied.We find that research on a larger set of stakeholders and contexts is needed.We identify important suggestions for changes to a well-known classification scheme.We propose critical case studies and theory triangulation to further the discourse.We identify open communities as potentially important to further the discourse. The tool integration research area emerged in the 1980s. This survey focuses on those strands of tool integration research that discuss issues beyond technology.We reveal a discourse centered around six frequently mentioned non-functional properties. These properties have been discussed in relation to technology and high level issues. However, while technical details have been covered, high level issues and, by extension, the contexts in which tool integration can be found, are treated indifferently. We conclude that this indifference needs to be challenged, and research on a larger set of stakeholders and contexts initiated.An inventory of the use of classification schemes underlines the difficulty of evolving the classical classification scheme published by Wasserman. Two frequently mentioned redefinitions are highlighted to facilitate their wider use.A closer look at the limited number of research methods and the poor attention to research design indicates a need for a changed set of research methods. We propose more critical case studies and method diversification through theory triangulation.Additionally, among disparate discourses we highlight several focusing on standardization which are likely to contain relevant findings. This suggests that open communities employed in the context of (pre-)standardization could be especially important in furthering the targeted discourse.

Qualifying software tools, a systems approach

Modern safety standards designed to ensure safety in embedded system products often take a descriptive approach, focusing on describing appropriate requirements on management, processes, methods and environments during development. While the qualification of software tools has been included in several such standards, how to handle the safety implications of tools integrated into tool chains has been largely ignored. This problem is aggravated by an increase both in automation of tool integration and the size of development environments. In this paper we define nine safety goals for tool chains and suggest a qualification method that takes a systems approach on certifying software tools as parts of tool chains. With this method, software tools are developed and pre-qualified under the assumption that certain properties will be supported by the development environment they are to be deployed in. The proposed method is intended to (1) achieve a stronger focus on the relevant parts of tool chains in regard to safety and (2) separate the extra effort these parts imply from the effort already stipulated by safety standards.

Architecture challenges for intelligent autonomous machines : An industrial perspective

Machines are displaying a trend of increasing autonomy. This has a far reaching impact on the architectures of the embedded systems within the machine. The impact needs to be clearly understood and ...

Characterization, Analysis, and Recommendations for Exploiting the Opportunities of Cyber-Physical Systems

Leveraging on a comprehensive analysis of cyber-physical systems (CPSs) in Europe, this chapter presents overall findings focusing on (1) a characterization of CPS, (2) opportunities and challenges ...

Measuring tool chain interoperability in Cyber-Physical Systems

Cyber-Physical Systems are developed through complex engineering projects that include many stakeholders and a variety of tools and processes from different engineering backgrounds. Interoperability in these development tool chains is an important aspect for well-integrated systems. Furthermore, since full tool chain interoperability is neither possible nor necessarily desired, measuring interoperability in development environments is essential for setting the right priorities. This systematic literature review gives an overview of the literature about interoperability assessment methods. A survey was conducted through digital libraries and a total of 42 papers were read. Out of these papers, 24 different interoperability assessment models were identified and analyzed. A striking find of this study is that no proof of industrial adaptation of these models was found. In this paper, we analyze the reasons for this lack of validation in the context of CPS development.

Intelligent Transport Systems - The Role of a Safety Loop for Holistic Safety Management

An ITS represents a Cyber-Physical System (CPS), which will involve information exchange at operational level as well as potential explicit collaboration between separate entities (systems of systems). Specific emphasis is required to manage the complexity and safety of such future CPS. In this paper we focus on model-based approaches for these purposes for analyzing and managing safety throughout the lifecycle of ITS. We argue that: (1) run-time risk assessment will be necessary for efficient ITS; (2) an information centric approach will be instrumental for future ITS to support all aspects of safety management – a “safety loop”; (3) a formal basis is required to deal with the large amounts of information present in an ITS. We elaborate these arguments and discuss what is required to support their realization.

Towards the automated qualification of tool chain design

The development of safety-critical embedded systems is supported by a number of development tools, which are increasingly integrated into automated tool chains. Safety standards require these tool chains to be qualified, which is costly and requires a large effort. To reduce cost and effort tool chains can be composed of pre-qualified tools and then themselves pre-qualified by identifying the parts of tool chain software that have an impact on safety more exactly. In this paper we propose the use of a modeling language to describe this tool chain composition. This allows us to reduce effort even further by automatically analyzing the tool chain model for safety issues. It also promises to reduce the effort and cost of later steps in the deployment of the tool chain by formalizing the communication of safety issues and automating the generation of code for tool chain software.

Experiences and reflections on three years of CPS summer schools within EIT digital

This article provides an overview of current European Commission effort in term of educational innovation to reduce the gap between research and industry which still is a barrier to the economic development. Entrepreneurial innovation & education driving Europes digital transformation (EIT Digital for short) is an European-based initiative fostering I&E (innovation and entrepreneurship) by integrating education, research and business at different educational levels. For instance in EIT master programmes, students work together with industries and academics to have a faster go-to-market of research results. Summer schools are part of the master programs; three of them have been organised related to CPS (cyber-physical systems), critical infrastructure and, more recently, Industry 4.0. Past and present events are discussed and the experience from these events is reported. It is further analysed how the general setup of the summer school program is affecting the educational aspects and achievement of the intended learning outcomes.

Visual Analytics Towards Tool Interoperabilty - A Position Paper

Complex-engineering projects include artefacts from several engineering disciplines such as mechanical, electrical, software components, processes and plans. While software tools can be powerful in ...