Section: Application Domains

Automotive and avionic embedded systems

Model-Driven Engineering is in general well accepted in the transportation domains, where design of digital software and electronic parts in usually tighly coupled with larger aspects of system design, where models from physics are being used already. The formalisms AADL (for avionics) and AutoSar [66] (for automotive) are providing support for this, unfortunately not always with a clean and formal semantics. Thus there is a strong need here for approaches that bring closer together formal methods and tools on the one hand, engineering best practices on the other hand.

From a structural point of view AUTOSAR succeeded in establishing a framework that provides significant confidence in the proper integration of software components from a variety of distinct suppliers. But beyond those structural (interface) aspects, dynamic and temporal views are becoming more of a concern, so that AUTOSAR has introduced the AUTOSAR Specification of Timing Extension. AUTOSAR (discrete) timing models consist of timing descriptions, expressed by events and event chains, and timing constraints that are imposed on these events and event chains.

An important issue in all such formalisms is to mix in a single design framework heterogeneous time models and tasks: based on different timebases, with different triggering policy (event-triggered and time-triggered), and periodic and/or aperiodic tasks, with distinct periodicity if ever. Adequate modeling is a prerequisite to the process of scheduling and allocating such tasks onto complex embedded architectural platforms (see AAA approach in foundation section 3.3 ). Only then can one devise powerful synthesis/analysis/verification techniques to guide designers towards optimized solutions.

Traceability is also an important concern, to close the gap between early requirements and constraints modelling on the one hand, verification and correct implementation of these constraints at the different levels of the development on the other hand.