Samir Ben Ahmed

Safe reconfigurations of agents-based embedded control systems

The development of safe reconfigurable embedded control systems is a tremendous task since they must fulfill functional as well as safety requirements. In this paper the authors propose an agent-based approach to handle safe reconfigurations of control systems. The specification of the solution is covered by a set of UML-compliant metamodels. More specifically, the different software architectural configurations of the control system are described as a set of inter-connected software components. The reconfiguration is thus assured by an autonomous software agent which interacts with users and applies several forms of reconfiguration at different granularity levels of the systems architecture. Three architectural levels are defined in order to consider all possible reconfiguration scenarios of embedded control systems. In order to bring the reconfigurable system into safe behaviors after any reconfiguration, the agent has the ability of monitoring the systems environment and to apply appropriate reconfigurations under well-defined constraints.

UML-Based Design and Validation of Intelligent Agents-Based Reconfigurable Embedded Control Systems

The paper examines UML-based design and validation of reconfigurable embedded control systems which can have multiple software architectural configurations such that each one is designed by a set of inter-connected software components. To handle dynamic reconfiguration scenarios, the authors define a software agent which interacts with users and applies several forms of reconfiguration at different granularity levels of the systems architecture. The agent has the ability of monitoring the systems environment and to apply appropriate and valid reconfiguration scenarios under well-defined constraints. Three architectural levels are defined in order to consider all possible reconfiguration forms of embedded systems. The authors define a set of UML-compliant metamodels to describe the knowledge about the reconfiguration agent, the system architecture, the reconfiguration scenarios, and the reconfiguration events. Validity of reconfigurations scenarios are checked using an UML-based environment which allows evaluating architectural and reconfiguration constraints. The proposed reconfiguration approach is applied to the FESTO production system.

A genetic based scheduling approach of real-time reconfigurable embedded systems

This paper deals with the problem of scheduling the mixed workload of both homogeneous multiprocessor on-line and off-line periodic tasks in a critical reconfigurable real-time environment by a genetic algorithm. Two forms of automatic reconfigurations which are assumed to be applied at run-time: Addition-Removal of tasks or just modifications of their temporal parameters: worst case execution time (WCET) and/or deadlines. Nevertheless, when such a scenario is applied to save the system at the occurrence of hardware-software faults, or to improve its performance, some real-time properties can be violated at run-time. We define an Intelligent Agent that automatically checks the systems feasibility after any reconfiguration scenario to verify if all tasks meet the required deadlines after a reconfiguration scenario was applied on a multiprocessor embedded real-time system. Indeed, if the system is unfeasible, then the proposed genetic algorithm dynamically provides a solution that meets real-time constraints. This genetic algorithm based on a highly efficient decoding procedure, strongly improves the quality of real-time scheduling in a critical environment. The effectiveness and the performance of the designed approach is evaluated through simulation studies illustrated by testing Hoppers benchmark results.

ArchMDE Approach for the Formal Verification of Real Time Systems

Arch MDE for Architecture-centric Model Driven Engineering is an approach that addresses the development and the formal verification of real time software architecture. It borrows concepts from Model Driven Engineering (MDE)and software architecture for the automatic generation of a network of timed automata, in accordance with blackboard architectural style. The generation is based on real time systems functional architecture, which is described by using TURTLE profile tclass and activity diagrams. In this paper, we describe the transformations between models, which generate the network of timed automata, and we illustrate with a case study the use of the Arch MDE approach.

ArchMDE approach for the development of embedded real time systems

The development of Embedded Real Time Systems (ERTS) is generally a complex task that requires high costs and long delays. New development tools should be elaborated in order to improve ERTS developers productivity. Model Driven Engineering (MDE) is an emerging paradigm that advances the idea to use models and models transformations to make the development process cost effective. n nThis paper introduces the Architecture-centric Model Driven Engineering (ArchMDE) approach that stresses architecture-based development and validation of ERTS. We have defined a set of architectural meta-models and a set of QVT transformation rules to automate the generation of architecture-specific models of ERTS.

Robotics data real-time management based on NoSQL solution

In nowadays, robotics database management systems are increasing. These systems ensure good storage of data and with big data analytic, a new approach demands new structures and methods for collecting, recording, and analyzing enterprise data. This paper work deals with the NoSQL databases which are the secret of the continual progression data that new data management solutions have been emerged. They crossed several areas as personalization, profile management, big data in real-time, content management, catalogue, view of customers, mobile applications, internet of things, digital communication and fraud detection. Machine learning, for example, thrives on more data, so smart machines can learn more and faster, the Robotics are our use of case to focus on our Test. The implementation of NoSQL for Robotics wrestle all the data they acquire into usable form because with the ordinary type of Robotics we are facing very big limits to manage and find the exact information in real-time. Our original proposed approach was demonstrated by experimental studies and running example used as a use case.

A neural networks based approach for the real-time scheduling of reconfigurable embedded systems with minimization of power consumption

While most embedded systems are designed for real-time applications, they suffer from resource constraints. Many techniques have been proposed for real-time task scheduling to reduce energy consumption. A combination of Dynamic Voltage Scaling (DVS) and feedback scheduling can be used to scale dynamically the frequency by adjusting the operating voltage, and to improve the run-time reliability of embedded systems. We present in this paper a novel hybrid contribution that handles real-time scheduling of embedded systems and low power consumption based on the combination of DVS and Neural Feedback Scheduling NFS with the priority-energy earliest-deadline-first (PEDF) algorithm.

Balancing between Local and Global Optimization of Web Services Composition by a Fuzzy Transactional-aware Approach

The tremendous growth in the amount of available web services due to the proliferation of paradigms such as Big Data and Cloud Computing has raised many challenges in service computing. When there are multiple web services that offer the same functionalities, we need to select the best one according to its nonfunctional criteria (e.g. response time, price, reliability) while guaranteeing a global optimization. Many approaches have been introduced to tackle this problem. However, most of them neglected users preferences, which can be very vague and imprecise, in the selection process. Besides, transactional properties that can insure a reliable achievement of the composition are rarely considered. This paper suggests a solution to this challenge by modelling users uncertain preferences with fuzzy sets. We then compute the set of Skyline services which are the best candidates in the search space with fuzzy dominance relationship and fuzzy similarity measures. Finally we inject transactional properties in order to guarantee a global optimization with a successful achievement of the composition process. Experimental evaluation demonstrates the effectiveness of the proposed concept and the efficiency of our implementation.

UML MARTE-based design of reconfigurable distributed embedded control systems

The current research paper specifies the dynamic reconfiguration of distributed embedded control systems. A reconfiguration is a distributed run-time automatic operation to adapt the systems behaviour to its environment. We propose a multi-agent architecture to handle and control all reconfiguration scenarios. In order to specify the defined architecture, we propose a model driven approach based on the concept of Mode of the MARTE profile. Each mode describes a possible behavior of the system for a well-determined environment associated with a software configuration. This approach proposes to model the reconfigurability through the definition of the reconfigurable architectures, the reconfiguration operations and the agents that run these operations within a distributed environment.