Complexity Challenges in Cyber Physical Systems

10Model‐Based Engineering with Application to Autonomy

Rahul Bhadani, Matt Bunting, and Jonathan Sprinkle

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, The University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA

10.1 Introduction

Model‐based design is a promising methodology in the design and deployment of autonomous cyber‐physical systems. As the scale and complexity of such systems grow, designers and engineers have started employing a model‐based approach towards model‐based engineering (Al Faruque and Ahourai 2014). However, due to the inherent complexity of autonomous cyber‐physical processes, it is imperative to account for dynamic behavior of the CPS under a wide variety of conditions. Complexity in CPS system arise due to its physical component being a function of continuous time while cyber component being a function of discrete‐time. As a result, it is crucial to address the gap between modeling of autonomous CPS and validation and verification (V&V) cycle that takes into account the complex heterogeneous nature of such systems. Methods in model‐based design enable CPS designers to implement tasks of V&V by abstracting large systems at a coarser level. These abstractions fall into different categories such as meta‐modeling, interpreter design and language modeling, and structural and behavioral modeling (Nordstrom et al. 1999; Lédeczi et al. 2001c; Sprinkle and Karsai 2003; Emerson et al. 2004; Tolvanen and Kelly 2009; Jackson et al. 2011; Kelly et al. 2013).

While there are ...