Closed-Loop Modeling in Future Automation System Engineering and Validation

This paper presents a new framework for design and validation of industrial automation systems based on systematic application of formal methods. The engineering methodology proposed in this paper is based on the component design of automated manufacturing systems from intelligent mechatronic components. Foundations of such componentspsila information infrastructure are the new IEC 61499 architecture and the automation object concept. It is illustrated in this paper how these architectures, in conjunction with other advanced technologies, such as Unified Modeling Language, Simulink, and net condition/event systems, form a framework that enables pick-and-place design, simulation, formal verification, and deployment with the support of a suite of software tools. The key feature of the framework is the inherent support of formal validation techniques achieved on account of automated transformation among different system models. The paper appeals to developers of automation systems and automation software tools via showing the pathway to improve the system development practices by combining several design and validation methodologies and technologies.     

How rapid is rapid prototyping?

New methodologies, engineering processes and support environments are beginning to emerge for embedded signal-processing systems. The main objectives are to enable industry to field state-of-the-art products in less time and with lower costs, including retrofits and upgrades, based predominantly on commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) components and the model-year concept. One of the cornerstones of the new methodologies is the concept of rapid prototyping. This is the ability to rapidly and seamlessly move from functional design, to architectural design, to implementation, through automatic code generation tools, onto real-time COTS test beds. This paper tries to quantify the term 'rapid' and provides results-metrics-from two independent benchmarks: a radar and sonar beamforming application subset. The metrics show that the rapid prototyping process may be 16 times faster than a conventional process     

Assembling components with behavioural contracts

Component based design is a new paradigm to build distributed systems and applications. The problem of compositional verification of such systems is however still open. We investigate methods and concepts for the provision of “sound” assemblies. We define a behavioural interface type language endowed with a (decidable) set of interface compatibilty and subtyping rules. We define an abstract, dynamic, multi-threaded, component model, encompassing both client/server and peer to peer communication patterns. Based on the notion of compliance of components to their interfaces, we define the concepts of “contract” and “contract satisfaction”. This leads to sound assemblies of components, which possess interesting properties, such as “external deadlockfreeness” and “message consumption”.     

Automating software development

The various phases of system design for which CASE (computer aided software engineering) tools can be used are outlined. Integration of CASE tools is discussed. The use of CASE in a distributed environment is addressed     

Wireless Microfluidic Systems for Programmed,Functional Transformation of Transient Electronic Devices

Electronic systems that enable programmable transformation of functional behaviors by remote control or by autonomous responses to user‐defined circumstances create unusual engineering opportunities, where physical changes in the hardware induce desired changes in operation. This paper presents materials and device architectures for technologies of this type, in which localized microfluidic chemical etching of targeted constituent components in the electronics occurs in a sequential, selective manner. Custom circuits that include reconfigurable radio‐powered thermal actuators with analog amplifiers and square waveform generators illustrate the concepts.     

Considerations in producibility engineering of MMIC's

The topics covered are monolithic microwave and millimeter-wave integrated circuit (MMIC) chip design methodologies, chip design tools, module design methodologies, and module development tools. Various aspects of producibility engineering at both the chip and the module level are addressed in terms of developing prudent design methodologies and design tools to enhance the accuracy of simulation tools at the circuit and module levels. Producibility engineering considerations are presented for MMIC chips and modules. In each category, relevant approaches and some of the innovative design tools are highlighted     

Technology transfer between VLSI design and software engineering: CAD tools and design methodologies

Recent research on the explicit transfer of technology used in computer-aided design (CAD) tools and design methodologies is reported. First, several examples are given of applications of these technologies to software engineering. Then, three research projects are described which focused on applying software engineering principles to the VLSI design process. They are: a methodology, language, and assessment tool for multilevel mixed-mode VLSI designs; a research project that explored the potential for transfer of software design methodologies for managing VLSI design complexity; and a specification technique for "modules" in a VLSI design that localizes the impact of changes to the design. Next, a CAD tool and design methodology are described which consider the design of software and hardware together, and apply common techniques to both. Finally, some observations are made on the appropriateness of technology transfer between VLSI design and software engineering.     

RASSP Enterprise Technologies for Signal Processor Life-Cycle Support

Enterprise integration technologies are a key contributor to improving time-to-market, cost, and design quality by a factor, which is the goal of the DARPA Rapid Prototyping of Application-Specific Signal Processors (RASSP) program [1]. The Lockheed Martin Advanced Technology Laboratories (ATL) RASSP team developed a productivity improvement model, shown in Fig. 1, that indicates the relative contributions of various RASSP technologies to the overall improvement. Enterprise technologies address the entire 17% enterprise partition, and more than half of the 30% reuse and model-year architecture partition, thus accounting for at least 35% of the overall RASSP productivity improvement.The ATL RASSP approach to implement enterprise systems is to extend commercial technologies so the results are available to a broad base of potential users. Unlike current automation concepts which start at later stages of the development cycle, the RASSP enterprise system supports the entire signal processor life cycle. Core concepts of the enterprise system include:Tools and tool frameworks integrated into an enterprise environmentProgram execution control through workflowsIntegrated data management functionsDesign reuseConcurrent engineering team supportIntegrated design engineering and manufacturing.The model-year architecture, which enables users to rapidly, efficiently upgrade systems with new technology, is supported in the enterprise system by a robust reuse management system. Manufacturing interface and communication services elements of the enterprise system provide improved concurrent engineering support for distributed product teams. The enterprise system will be provided to commercial and aerospace users as products, including a reusable set of workflows for electronics design, commercial tools supporting the enterprise system environment, and utilities to enable users to customize the RASSP enterprise system for a particular organization or project.The enterprise system development cycle includes four build cycles with increasing capabilities. The ATL team completed the Build 2 implementation in May'96. This implementation supports the processes associated with detailed hardware/software design, architecture design, and trade-off analyses. It is being used at Lockheed Martin and multiple government sites for benchmarking and evaluation. Results to date indicate >5:1 productivity improvements in the manufacturing interface, and 5–10% improvements in design engineering, which is growing with increasing level of utilization.     

Behind the “bathtub”-curve A new model and its consequences

The hitherto commonly accepted background model for the “bathtub” curve is rejected due to lack of experimental evidence. A new model — the S-curve model — based on bimodal or trimodal failure distribution functions and the concepts of “strong”, “freak” and “infant mortality” components is presented and its fitting with practical experience is demonstrated. The impact of the new model with regard to burn-in of components and systems and the use of reliability indicators to screen for built-in “flaws” in components are described.     

Virtual Computing Infrastructures for Nanoelectronics Simulation

The operational principles, components, and organization of a Grid-computing infrastructure called In-VIGO (standing for In Virtual Information Grid Organizations)are described. In-VIGO enables computational engineering and science in virtual information Grid organizations. Its distinctive feature is the extensive use of virtualization technologies to provide secure execution environments as needed by tools and users. This paper reviews and motivates the requirements of a cyber infrastructure for computational nanoelectronics. It then explains how such requirements are addressed by the In-VIGO middleware approach, which uses virtualized resources to build computational Grids. The architecture and key design aspects of its first deployed version-In-VIGO 1.0-are presented. It is operational and currently being used to enable the use of computational electronics tools over the Web. Aspects of the design and architecture of the next version of In-VIGO are also presented. It uses Web services standards and components, and lessons learned from In-VIGO 1.0.     

Performance model of software systems using Petri nets

Recent trends of economization in the development and application of computer software systems have become an important consideration for the design of modern computer systems. This has increased the efforts towards the study, evaluation and testing of computer software. An appropriate measure may further help in overcoming the difficulties encountered during the testing of software.The present paper utilizes the concepts of Petri nets for the evaluation of various software parameters through a measure termed as “software measure”. This measure along with the firing characteristics of the transitions may then be used for obtaining the suitable testing methodology of a software.     

An information-theoretical framework for modeling component-based systems

Software systems tend to be large scale and complex with the inevitable increase in their functionalities. The increasing costs related to system development and maintenance in correlation to the software size requires new assessment tools for the newly evolving development methodologies. Taking advantage of existing tools and methodologies in a mature field is beneficial to relatively young, related disciplines. Therefore, this paper brings modeling techniques from a well-developed and mature discipline, information theory, into component-based software (CBS) engineering. Information-theoretic representation and analysis techniques in general, noiseless information channel concepts in particular, are good candidates to be adopted to model the dynamic behavior of software components and quantify the interaction between them. This modeling approach is realized by first modeling the component integration units of CBS with cubic control flowgraphs. The arcs in these models can be labeled as functions of parameters of their "hidden" components in the originating nodes or arcs, or both. Each of these labeled graphs defines a Shannon language. Then, a set of metrics, labeled as pervasive Shannon metrics is defined. Four case studies are demonstrated to show the applicability of the proposed metrics for assessment of CBS.     

Design of practical broadband matching networks with commensurate transmission lines

To design broadband matching networks for microwave communication systems, commercially available computer aided design (CAD) tools are always preferred. But these tools need proper matching network topology and element values. Therefore, in this paper, a practical method is proposed to generate distributed-element matching networks with good initial element values. Then, the gain performance of the designed matching network can be optimized employing these tools. The utilization of the proposed method is illustrated by means of the given example. It is shown that proposed method provides very good initials for CAD tools.     

Generic discrete–continuous simulation model for accurate validation in heterogeneous systems design

Heterogeneous systems combining several technologies will potentially overcome several performances and applicability limitations, as well as providing new useful features. However, their design is currently confronted to important challenges. One of the key challenges is the integration of pre-built components specific to different application domains (e.g. electrical, mechanical, optical, etc.). In this context, new CAD tools are mandatory to offer a global view of the designed systems and to enable their overall validation. This paper presents a generic discrete–continuous simulation model for an accurate global validation in heterogeneous systems design. This model enables to use powerful tools for the discrete and continuous domains. Solutions are proposed for model's layers implementation in the case of SystemC and Simulink simulators. The continuous–discrete simulation tool is proposed. This tool integrates the two previous simulators by automatically generating global simulation model instances. The evaluation of the simulation model was performed using an illustrative application.     

Social Networking Ontology Engineering Walkthrough: Practical Approach for Non-Expert User Learning

The utilization of ontologies in knowledge management has become very well accepted in many approaches for instance database, semantics, agent, natural language processing, etc. Artificial intelligent researchers have originally applied the word “ontology” from Philosophy fields which means “being existence”, then the word spread in many scientific domain and ontologies are now used in several developments. The purpose of this research is to present the simple methodologies and methods used to build/adapt/integrate ontologies from the system requirement or by reusing and re-engineering other ontologies; also a process of merging approach will be addressed. The normal ontology engineering will not be suitable for non-expert user; and there are some tools for helping the user to accomplish the ontology engineering task, however, it is not that simple. This paper mentioned the observation and figure out the practical methodology for non-expert user to learn and create simple ontology with little background of them. This paper mentioned the ontology and ontology engineering revisits. Also the main section in this paper mentioned the scenario walkthrough about reality of how non-expert user creates the simple ontology by using suggested and existing methodologies. The last section is recommendation and suggestion from the research experimental which explain the proper ontology developing methodology for non-expert user.     

Concurrent engineering tools: are the human issues being ignored?

Concurrent engineering (CE) tools are intended to increase the concurrency of multidisciplinary design by integrating various enabling technologies such as computer-aided design, computer-aided manufacturing, group decision support systems, expert systems, and communication networks. If the long term viability of CE depends on effectively developing and deploying CE tools, the assumptions about how CE design tasks are most successfully performed and the roles of tools in facilitating that work should be carefully reviewed. This paper identifies the human factors assumptions made by the CE tool development community and compares them to conclusions drawn from existing literature on the role of technologies in performing technical work. This comparison suggests that the assumptions made by the CE tool development community are likely to inhibit CE tools from successfully enabling the CE process. Recommendations for remedying this state of affairs are offered in the form of restated assumptions that are consistent with documented behaviors of people using similar technologies and potential development strategies for CE tool developers     

探讨CAD绘图中“图块”的智能化应用

计算机技术与工程设计结合产生的CAD技术,不仅绘图速度快、精度高,而且在绘制过程中能够重用图形,更易于交流和管理。本文着重对CAD绘图中能实现“重用图形”的图形设计辅助工具--“图块”进行了深度探究,详细介绍了“属性块”、“动态块”的智能化应用。     

Open Source Building — Reinventing Places of Living

In this paper, we argue that new technologies and strategies for design can enable a more responsive model for creating places of living. We describe work by the House_n Research group at MIT to develop a conceptual framework for Open Source Building, and to prototype and test both alternative construction methodologies and new design tools that support it. We believe that this approach could transform how homes are created over the next 10–15 years, and create new pathways into this $322 billion per year market for companies producing materials, products, and services for the home [1].     

Systems engineering for better engineering

The complexities of today's products and the techniques needed to make them have made systems engineering methods essential to effective competition. The author discusses the rise of Japanese industry and how it overtook the West by using a systems engineering approach. In systems engineering. an uncoordinated, piecemeal enterprise is replaced by a coordinated approach taking a total view of the common system purpose, so that the separate elements are subsumed in the identity of the whole system with its overall measures of performance. The ability of the Japanese to make products of high quality, low cost and strong consumer appeal is based on the application of many methodologies and technologies within a systems engineering approach. The whole activity is supported by the relentless use of kaizen-continuous improvement against benchmark measures of performance. The author discusses some of these processes and looks at the concepts of the business as a system and the product as a system