We are now living in the era of digital transformation: Innovative and digital business models are transforming the global business world and society. However, the authors of this paper have perceived barriers that prevent requirements engineers from contributing properly to the development of the software systems that underpin the digital transformation. We also realized that breaking down each of these barriers would contribute to requirements engineering (RE) becoming ubiquitous in certain dimensions: RE everywhere, with everyone, for everything, automated, accepting openness, and cross-domain. In this paper, we analyze each dimension of ubiquity in the scope of the interaction between requirements engineers and end users. In particular, we point out the transformation that is required to break down each barrier, present the perspective of the scientific community and our own practical perspective, and discuss our vision on how to achieve this dimension of ubiquity. Our goal is to raise the interest of the research community in providing approaches to address the barriers and move towards ubiquitous RE.

Towards Ubiquitous RE: A Perspective on Requirements Engineering in the Era of Digital Transformation

Intelligent agents are software components that can work autonomously and proactively to solve the problems collaboratively. To this end, they can behave in a cooperative manner and collaborate with other agents constituting systems called Multi-agent Systems (MAS). These systems have different perspectives such as the internal structure, plan, interaction, organisation, role, environment and so on. By having these views, MASs can consider the structure, behaviour, interaction, and environment of the complex systems such as Cyber-physical Systems (CPS). Therefore, intelligent software agents and MASs can be used in the modelling and development of CPSs. There are different Domain-specific Modelling Languages (DSMLs) to build MASs with a focus on various MAS aspects. One of the generative MAS DSMLs is SEA_ML++ which presents a thorough Model-driven Engineering practice with including the abstract syntax, graphical concrete syntax, model-to-model transformations and model-to-code transformations with the support of Platform Independent and Platform Specific levels of MAS modelling. In this chapter, we discuss how SEA_ML++ is used for the design and implementation of agent-based CPSs. An MDE methodology is introduced in which SEA_ML++ can be used to design agent-based CPS and implement these systems on various agent execution platforms. As the evaluating case study, the development of a multi-agent garbage collection CPS is taken into consideration. The conducted study demonstrates how this CPS can be designed according to the various viewpoints of SEA_ML++ and then implemented and executed on Jason platform.

Agent-based cyber-physical system development with SEA_ML++

Background: The mobility domains are moving towards the adoption of multicore technology. Appropriate methods, techniques, and tools need to be developed or adapted in order to fulfill the existing requirements. This is a case for design space exploration methods and tools. Objective: Our goal was to understand the importance of different design space exploration goals with respect to their relevance, frequency of use, and tool support required in the development of multicore systems from the point of view of the ARAMiS project members. Our aim was to use the results to guide further work in the project. Method: We conducted a survey regarding the current state of the art in design space exploration in industry and research and collected the expectations of project members regarding design space exploration goals. Results: The results show that design space exploration is an important topic in industry as well as in research. It is used very often with different important goals to optimize the system. Conclusions: Current tools provide only partial solutions for design space exploration. Our results can be used for improving them and guiding their development according to the priorities explained in this contribution.

Practitioners' and researchers' expectations on design space exploration for multicore systems in the automotive and avionics domains: a survey

EDUCache simulator [1] is developed as a learning tool for undergraduate students enrolled the Computer Architecture and Organization course. It gives the explanations and details of the processor and exploitation of its cache memory. This paper shows a set of laboratory exercises and several case studies with examples on how to use the EDUCache simulator in the learning process. These hands-on laboratory exercises can be also used in learning software performance engineering and to increase the student willingness to learn more hardware based courses in their further studying.

Hands-on exercises to support computer architecture students using EDUCache simulator

The role of smart and autonomous systems is becoming vital in many areas of industry and society. Expectations from such systems continuously rise and become more ambitious: long lifetime, high reliability, high performance, energy efficiency, and adaptability, particularly in the presence of changing environments. Computational self-awareness promises a comprehensive assessment of the system state for sensible and well-informed actions and resource management. Computational self-awareness concepts can be used in many applications such as automated manufacturing plants, telecommunication systems, autonomous driving, traffic control, smart grids, and wearable health monitoring systems. Developing self-aware systems from scratch for each application is the most common practice currently, but this is highly redundant, inefficient, and uneconomic. Hence, we propose a framework that supports modeling and evaluation of various self-aware concepts in hierarchical agent systems, where agents are made up of self-aware functionalities. This paper presents the Research on Self-Awareness (RoSA) framework and its design principles. In addition, self-aware functionalities abstraction, data reliability, and confidence, which are currently provided by RoSA, are described. Potential use cases of RoSA are discussed. Capabilities of the proposed framework are showcased by case studies from the fields of healthcare and industrial monitoring. We believe that RoSA is capable of serving as a common framework for self-aware modeling and applications and thus helps researchers and engineers in exploring the vast design space of hierarchical agent-based systems with computational self-awareness.

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RoSA: A Framework for Modeling Self-Awareness in Cyber-Physical Systems

Smart Cyber-Physical Systems (sCPS) are a novel kind of Cyber- Physical System engineered to take advantage of large-scale cooperation between devices, users and environment to achieve added value in the face of uncertainty and changing environments. Examples of sCPS include modern traffic systems, Industry 4.0 systems, systems for smart buildings, and smart energy grids. The uniting aspect of all these systems is that to achieve their high level of intelligence, adaptivity and ability to optimize and learn, they rely heavily on software. This makes them software-intensive systems, where software becomes their most complex part. Engineering sCPS thus becomes a recognized software engineering discipline, which, due to specifics of sCPS, can only partially rely on the existing body of knowledge in software engineering. In fact, it turns out that many of the traditional approaches to architecture modeling and software development fall short in their ability to cope with the high dynamicity and uncertainty of sCPS. This calls for innovative approaches that jointly reflect and address the specifics of such systems. This paper maps the discussions and results of the Fourth International Workshop on Software Engineering for Smart Cyber-Physical Systems (SEsCPS 2018), which focuses on challenges and promising solutions in the area of software engineering for sCPS.

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Software Engineering for Smart Cyber-Physical Systems (SEsCPS 2018) - Workshop Report

Systems whose functionality and services span over multiple, interconnected application domains have become known as cyber-physical system (CPS) and currently receive much attention in research and practice. So far, CPS still come with a variety of development-process-related and technical challenges. These challenges include the interaction between the different domain-specific systems and possible conflicts between their requirements, as well as the choice of appropriate modelling concepts. This paper makes two main contributions: First, we show how such an inter-domain development-process can be structured, beginning with a a model-based requirements engineering approach. In order to illustrate the concepts, this paper provides a continuous example scenario, developed within a group of the respective domain experts, that outlines the future of mobility using technologies currently under development in the ARAMiS project. The intention is to allow for an analysis of interaction and possible interference between domain-specific scenarios as well as the analysis of the relation between derived domain specific scenarios and the global, cross-domain scenario. Second, we provide an analysis of the realisability of the scenario steps according to a set of quality criteria and estimate the respective time horizon, derived from interviews with experts from different domains. The described scenario allows the reification of goals and requirements of CPS for the mobility domain. Moreover, it makes apparent the need for connecting CPS of different domains. Our validation research provides an accompanying resource for future analysis of the interaction between domains and the relation between their requirements as well as teaching requirements engineering in the domain of CPS.

Inter-domain requirements and their future realisability: The ARAMiS cyber-physical systems scenario

Embedded systems are being increasingly used in changing environments where they no longer fulfill their associated stakeholder goals on their own, but rather in interaction with other embedded systems. This transition to networked, collaborative embedded systems is creating new application opportunities that impose numerous challenges for developers of these systems. In this introductory chapter of the book, we present the complexity of these systems and the challenges associated with them in a coherent manner. We illustrate the challenges using two use cases, “Vehicle Platooning” and “Adaptable and Flexible Factory.” Finally, we reference the challenges of developing collaborative embedded systems to the individual chapters of this book, which describe various methods of mastering the complexity in more detail.

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Sebastian Voss

Papers

Software Engineering for Smart Cyber-Physical Systems (SEsCPS 2018) - Workshop Report

Inter-domain requirements and their future realisability: The ARAMiS cyber-physical systems scenario

Engineering of Collaborative Embedded Systems.