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Chapter 6
INTRODUCTION
In the context of modern Embedded Control Sys-
tems (ECS), one of the most important challenges
is the tradeoff between performance and rapid
response to market changes and customer needs
(Leitão, 2004). This tradeoff is better obtained
when addressed early in the development process
at design time. Indeed, modern ECS become more
complex because they incorporate increasing
amounts of software. In order to counter the effect
of growing complexity, ECS are often designed in
Amen Ben Hadj Ali
Tunis El Manar University, Tunisia
Mohamed Khalgui
Xidian University, China
Samir Ben Ahmed
Tunis El Manar University, Tunisia
Antonio Valentini
O3neida Europe, Belgium
A UML-Compliant Approach
for Intelligent Reconfguration
of Embedded Control Systems
ABSTRACT
The chapter deals with UML-based design of Reconfgurable Embedded Control Systems (RECS). The
diferent software architectural confgurations of the control system are described as a set of inter-
connected software components. A software agent is defned in order to handle dynamic reconfguration
scenarios. The agent has the ability to interact with users and to monitor the system’s environment in
order to apply valid reconfguration scenarios at diferent levels of the system’s architecture. In order
to address all possible forms of reconfguration, three architectural levels are defned. A set of UML-
compliant metamodels are proposed in order to describe the knowledge about the reconfguration agent,
the system architecture, the reconfguration scenarios, and the reconfguration events. The validity of
the reconfguration scenarios is checked by using a UML-based environment that allows evaluation of
the architectural and reconfguration constraints. The proposed reconfguration approach is applied to
two industrial production systems, FESTO and ENAS.
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-4666-3922-5.ch006