A prototyping language for real-time software

PSDL is a language for describing prototypes of real-time software systems. It is most useful for requirements analysis, feasibility studies, and the design of large embedded systems. PSDL has facilities for recording and enforcing timing constraints, and for modeling the control aspects of real-time systems using nonprocedural control constraints, operator abstractions, and data abstractions. The language has been designed for use with an associated prototyping methodology. PSDL prototypes are executable if supported by a software base containing reusable software components in an underlying programming language (e.g. Ada)     

Evaluating software architectures for real-time systems

In this paper we describe a process for evaluating the architectures of large, complex software-intensive systems. This process involves both social and technical aspects. The social aspects deal with planning and running an evaluation. The technical aspects concentrate on the representation of architectural information, standard questions, analyses, and quality attribute characterizations. We then take the generic notion of architectural evaluation, and discuss some techniques for applying this technique to the domain of real-time systems. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Compositional semantics of a real-time prototyping language

The formal semantics of a prototyping language for hard real-time systems, PSDL, is given. PSDL provides a data flow notation augmented by application-orientation timing and control constraints to describe a system as a hierarchy of networks of processing units communicating via data streams. The semantics of PSDL are defined in terms of algebraic high-level Petri nets. This formalism combines algebraic specifications of abstract data types with process and concurrency concepts of Petri nets. Its data abstraction facilities are used to define the meaning of PSDL data types, while high-level Petri nets serve to model the casual and timing behavior of a system. The net model exposes potential concurrency of computation and makes all synchronization needs implied by timing and control constraints explicit and precise. Time is treated as state of clocks, and clocks are modeled as ordinary system components. The net semantics provides the basis for applying analysis techniques and semantic tools available for high-level Petri nets     

Foundations of a new software engineering method for real-time systems

The design of a fault-tolerant distributed, real-time, embedded system with safety-critical concerns requires the use of formal languages. In this paper, we present the foundations of a new software engineering method for real-time systems that enables the integration of semiformal and formal notations. This new software engineering method is mostly based upon the ”COntinuuM” co-modeling methodology that we have used to integrate architecture models of real-time systems (Perseil and Pautet in 12th International conference on engineering of complex computer systems, ICECCS, IEEE Computer Society, Auckland, pp 371–376, 2007) (so we call it “Method C”), and a model-driven development process (ISBN 978-0-387-39361-2 in: From model-driven design to resource management for distributed embedded systems, Springer, chap. MDE benefits for distributed, real time and embedded systems, 2006). The method will be tested in the design and development of integrated modular avionics (IMA) frameworks, with DO178, DO254, DO297, and MILS-CC requirements.     

Rapid prototyping of real-time control laws for complex mechatronic systems: a case study

Rapid prototyping of complex systems embedded in even more complex environments raises the need for a layered design approach. Our example is a mechatronic design taken from the automotive industry and illustrates the rapid-prototyping procedure of real-time-critical control laws. The approach is based on an object-oriented structuring allowing not only central control units but also distributed control units as needed by today’s designs. The implementation of control laws is a hardware-in-the-loop simulation, refined in steps and reducing the simulation part at every one of these. On the lower level, common platforms, such as FPGAs, microcontrollers or specialized platforms, can be instantiated.     

Scalable real-time animation of rivers

Many recent games and applications target the interactive exploration of realistic large scale worlds. These worlds consist mostly of static terrain models, as the simulation of animated fluids in these virtual worlds is computationally expensive. Adding flowing fluids, such as rivers, to these virtual worlds would greatly enhance their realism, but causes specific issues: as the user is usually observing the world at close range, small scale details such as waves and ripples are important. However, the large scale of the world makes classical methods impractical for simulating these effects. In this paper, we present an algorithm for the interactive simulation of realistic flowing fluids in large virtual worlds. Our method relies on two key contributions: the local computation of the velocity field of a steady flow given boundary conditions, and the advection of small scale details on a fluid, following the velocity field, and uniformly sampled in screen space.     

Requirements-document-based prototyping of CARA software

Computer-aided prototyping evaluates and refines software requirements by defining requirements specifications, designing underlying compositional architecture, doing restricted real-time scheduling, and constructing a prototype by using reusable executable software components. This paper presents a case study of the Computer Assisted Resuscitation Algorithm (CARA) software for a casualty intravenous fluid infusion pump and explores the effectiveness of performing rapid prototyping with parallel conceptualization to expose requirements issues. Using a suite of prototyping tools, five different design model alternatives are generated based on the analysis of customer requirements documents. Further comparison is conducted with specific focus on a sample of comparative criteria: simplicity of design, safety aspects, requirements coverage, and enabling architecture. The case study demonstrates the usefulness of comparative rapid prototyping for revealing the omissions and discrepancies in the requirements document. The study also illustrates the efficiency of creating/modifying parallel models and reason for their complexity by using the tool suite. Additional enhancements for the prototyping suite are highlighted.     

Decimation of human face model for real-time animation in intelligent multimedia systems

Animating a complex human face model in real-time is not a trivial task in intelligent multimedia systems for next generation environments. This paper proposes a generation scheme of a simplified model for real-time human face animation in intelligent multimedia systems. Previous work mainly focused on the geometric features when generating a simplified human face model. Such methods may lose the critical feature points for animating human faces. The proposed method can find those important feature points and can generate the feature-preserved low-level models busing our new quadrics. The new quadrics consist of basic error metrics and feature edge quadrics. The quality of facial animation with a lower-level model is as good as that of a computationally expansive original model. In this paper, we prove that our decimated facial model is effective in facial animation using a well-known expression-retargeting technique.     

A flexible environment for rapid prototyping and analysis of distributed real-time safety-critical systems

Currently, there is a plethora of low-cost commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) hardware available for implementing control systems. These range from devices with fairly low intelligence, e.g. smart sensors and actuators, to dedicated controllers such as PowerPC, programmable logic controllers (PLCs) and PC-based boards to dedicated systems-on-a-chip (SoC) ASICS and FPGAs. When considering the construction of complex distributed systems, e.g. for a ship, aircraft, car, train, process plant, the ability to rapidly integrate a variety of devices from different manufacturers is essential. A problem, however, is that manufacturers prefer to supply proprietary tools for programming their products. As a consequence of this lack of ‘openness’, rapid prototyping and development of distributed systems is extremely difficult and costly for a systems integrator. Great opportunities thus exist to produce high-performance, dependable distributed systems. However, the key element that is missing is software tool support for systems integration. The objective of the Flexible Control Systems Development and Integration Environment for Control Systems (FLEXICON) project IST-2001-37269 is to solve these problems for industry and reduce development and implementation costs for distributed control systems by providing an integrated suite of tools to support all the development life-cycle of the system. Work within the Rolls-Royce supported University Technology Centre (UTC) is investigating rapid prototyping of controllers for aero-engines, unmanned aerial vehicles and ships. This paper describes the use of the developed co-simulation environment for a high-speed merchant vessel propulsion system application.     

Scenario-based requirements analysis techniques for real-time software systems: a comparative evaluation

One of the most critical phases of software engineering is requirements elicitation and analysis. Success in a software project is influenced by the quality of requirements and their associated analysis since their outputs contribute to higher level design and verification decisions. Real-time software systems are event driven and contain temporal and resource limitation constraints. Natural-language-based specification and analysis of such systems are then limited to identifying functional and non-functional elements only. In order to design an architecture, or to be able to test and verify these systems, a comprehensive understanding of dependencies, concurrency, response times, and resource usage are necessary. Scenario-based analysis techniques provide a way to decompose requirements to understand the said attributes of real-time systems. However they are in themselves inadequate for providing support for all real-time attributes. This paper discusses and evaluates the suitability of certain scenario-based models in a real-time software environment and then proposes an approach, called timed automata, that constructs a formalised view of scenarios that generate timed specifications. This approach represents the operational view of scenarios with the support of a formal representation that is needed for real-time systems. Our results indicate that models with notations and semantic support for representing temporal and resource usage of scenario provide a better analysis domain.H. Saiedian is a member of the Information & Telecommunication Technology Center at the University of Kansas. His research was partially supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF).     

Specifics of development of software systems for real-time pattern recognition

Requirements to systems for real-time pattern recognition are formulated. An approach to organization of the software system for real-time pattern recognition and evaluation of system effectiveness is proposed.     

Prototype of fault adaptive embedded software for large-scale real-time systems

This paper describes a comprehensive prototype of large-scale fault adaptive embedded software developed for the proposed Fermilab BTeV high energy physics experiment. Lightweight self-optimizing agents embedded within Level 1 of the prototype are responsible for proactive and reactive monitoring and mitigation based on specified layers of competence. The agents are self-protecting, detecting cascading failures using a distributed approach. Adaptive, reconfigurable, and mobile objects for reliablility are designed to be self-configuring to adapt automatically to dynamically changing environments. These objects provide a self-healing layer with the ability to discover, diagnose, and react to discontinuities in real-time processing. A generic modeling environment was developed to facilitate design and implementation of hardware resource specifications, application data flow, and failure mitigation strategies. Level 1 of the planned BTeV trigger system alone will consist of 2500 DSPs, so the number of components and intractable fault scenarios involved make it impossible to design an ‘expert system’ that applies traditional centralized mitigative strategies based on rules capturing every possible system state. Instead, a distributed reactive approach is implemented using the tools and methodologies developed by the Real-Time Embedded Systems group.     

Experimental evaluation of software development tools for safety-critical real-time systems

Since the early years of computing, programmers, systems analysts, and software engineers have sought ways to improve development process efficiency. Software development tools are programs that help developers create other programs and automate mundane operations while bringing the level of abstraction closer to the application engineer. In practice, software development tools have been in wide use among safety-critical system developers. Typical application areas include space, aviation, automotive, nuclear, railroad, medical, and military. While their use is widespread in safety-critical systems, the tools do not always assure the safe behavior of their respective products. This study examines the assumptions, practices, and criteria for assessing software development tools for building safety-critical real-time systems. Experiments were designed for an avionics testbed and conducted on six industry-strength tools to assess their functionality, usability, efficiency, and traceability. The results some light on possible improvements in the tool evaluation process that can lead to potential tool qualification for safety-critical real-time systems.     

面向安全关键系统的实时数据处理软件设计

介绍了一种针对单片机、PSD,12C接口存储芯片为主要组件设计的一类针对安全关键系统的测量与控制装置的实时软件设计、数据传输、存储及处理方法。通过各项实验考核表明,这种设计方法可靠灵活、高效,而且有较好的开放性及通用性。     

Virtual prototyping of mechatronic systems

Mechatronic systems abound in technological fields such as robotics and machine tools industry. Significant advances in dynamic performance of these systems can be achieved provided that mutual interactions of different domains (such as mechanics, electronics, hydraulics and control) are thoroughly understood. Virtual prototyping entails integration of multi-domain dynamic simulation in the design process, in order to reproduce and analyze the effects of design choices on the overall performance. This paper states the requirements of the modeling language and software tool for simulation of mechatronic systems and describes an experience of use of DYMOLA with Modelica language in the simulation of a complete machining center. The model has been successfully validated against experimental results collected on the real machining center.     

Wind projection basis for real-time animation of trees

This paper presents a real-time method to animate complex scenes of thousands of trees under a user-controllable wind load. Firstly, modal analysis is applied to extract the main modes of deformation from the mechanical model of a 3D tree. The novelty of our contribution is to precompute a new basis of the modal stress of the tree under wind load. At runtime, this basis allows to replace the modal projection of the external forces by a direct mapping for any directional wind. We show that this approach can be efficiently implemented on graphics hardware. This modal animation can be simulated at low computation cost even for large scenes containing thousands of trees.     

Rapid prototyping of computing systems

Pervasive or ubiquitous computing requires the integration of multiple technologies, including software, hardware and human-computer interaction (HCI). To prepare students for this new paradigm in computing, we need multi-disciplinary academic programs and courses. Furthermore, real-world design projects, design processes and team experiences must play a primary role. The course "Rapid Prototyping of Computing Systems" at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) combines all these elements in a single innovative course offered in multiple departments at CMU. Students learn topics in multiple disciplines and complete an industry-driven, team-based project using a well-defined design process. Although the course prepares students for a wide range of computing applications, the topics and projects focus on pervasive computing.