SummerSim-SCSC, 2019 July 22-24, Berlin, Germany; ©2019 Society for Modeling and Simulation International (SCS).
CYBER-PHYSICAL SYSTEMS ENGINEERING: MODEL-BASED SOLUTIONS
Alfredo Garro
Vittorio Vaccaro
Stefan Dutré
Jef Stegen
Department of Informatics, Modeling, Electronics
and Systems Engineering (DIMES)
Siemens Industry Software
Interleuvenlaan 68
University of Calabria
via P. Bucci 41C, 87036 Rende (CS), Italy
B-3001 Leuven, Belgium
{alfredo.garro, vittorio.vaccaro}@unical.it {stefan.dutre, jef.stegen}@siemens.com
ABSTRACT
As cyber-physical systems become more widespread, the scale and complexity of hardware and software
is increasing dramatically. Requirement Engineering plays a main role in this field. It gives a better vision
of the problem, facilitates the development of the components, makes the final product better and facili-
tates business choices. In this context, a lot of work is already being carried out to improve the functional-
ities offered to designers for the development of systems. This paper shows how to improve the efficiency
of cyber-physical system development by redefining some phases of the underlying systems engineering
processes. It also shows how the complexity that characterizes these processes can be reduced with the
use of innovative techniques for the integration and visualization of system models.
Keywords: Model-based Systems Engineering, Requirements Management, Integration and Visualiza-
tion, Safety Analysis.
1 INTRODUCTION
In the context of system development we are witnessing technological innovation. The most advanced
systems involve aspects of an interdisciplinary nature, merging the theory of cybernetics, mechatronics,
design and process science. Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) are becoming increasingly important. A CPS
is an integration of computation with physical processes whose behavior is defined by both cyber and
physical parts of the system. In cyber-physical systems, physical and software components are deeply in-
tertwined, each of which operates on different spatial and temporal scales, exhibiting multiple and distinct
behavioral modes and interacting with one another in many ways that change with the context. The addi-
tional benefit offered by cyber-physical systems will lead to radical changes in many application fields
(e.g. energy, mobility, health care) and will have an impact on our daily life and how it is affected by the
software. Today, in a market where rapid innovation is assumed, engineers of all disciplines must be able
to explore system projects collaboratively, assigning responsibility to software and physical elements and
analyzing trade-offs between them. The design of a complex cyber-physical system, in particular one with
heterogeneous subsystems distributed over networks, is a challenging task. The commonly used design
techniques are sophisticated and include mathematical modeling of physical systems, formal computa-
tional models, simulation of heterogeneous systems, software synthesis, verification, validation and test-
ing. In this context, the paper presents model-based solutions to improve the efficiency of cyber-physical
system development by redefining some phases of the underlying systems engineering processes with
particular focus on requirements management, models integrations and safety analysis. How the complex-
ity that characterizes these processes can be reduced with the use of innovative techniques for the integra-