Ontological reasoning in the design space exploration of advanced cyber–physical systems

Cyber–physical systems are becoming increasingly complex. In these advanced systems, the different engineering domains involved in the design process become more and more intertwined. Therefore, a traditional (sequential) design process becomes inefficient in finding good design options. Instead, an integrated approach is needed where parameters in multiple different engineering domains can be chosen, evaluated, and optimized to achieve a good overall solution. However, in such an approach, the combined design space becomes vast. As such, methods are needed to mitigate this problem.In this paper, we show a method for systematically capturing and updating domain knowledge in the context of a co-design process involving different engineering domains, i.e. control and embedded. We rely on ontologies to reason about the relationships between parameters in the different domains. This allows us to derive a stepwise design space exploration workflow where this domain knowledge is used to quickly reduce the design space to a subset of likely good candidates. We illustrate our approach by applying it to the design space exploration process for an advanced electric motor control system and its deployment on embedded hardware.     

State-of-the-art technologies and methodologies for collaborative product development systems

In order to facilitate product realisation processes, presently, research is actively being carried out to develop methodologies and technologies to support geographically dispersed teams to organise collaborative design based on the quickly evolving information technologies. A number of research works and commercial systems have appeared to provide solutions for collaborative and distributed product development, and the practical applications are getting more pervasive and mature. In this paper, the recently related works are summarised from three aspects—visualisation-based collaborative systems, co-design collaborative systems and CE (concurrent engineering)-based collaborative systems. Around these aspects, about 100 papers and 30 commercial systems/international standards published or launched recently are discussed. The current research and development statuses and issues, underlying algorithms, mechanisms and system architectures, and the future trends and challenges are explained and compared in detail.     

COVALENT,a method for co-designing value exchange in community-centred design

Abstract

It is challenging to design for mutually beneficial relationships in a multi-actor service system when these actors have diverse and conflicting interests, and lack usable methods and tools that support the design process. This study introduces a novel method for co-designing value exchange (COVALENT). COVALENT integrates the value analysis model, co-design strategy and service design tools, to support the conceptualisation of reciprocal value exchanges based on the analysis of and matching between, stakeholders’ needs and resources. Its perceived effectiveness was validated through application to the development of community business models in Ulsan, South Korea. This study contributes to the knowledge of co-design by providing a method for co-designing services that aim to achieve reciprocal value exchanges in the context of community-centred design and by discussing the effectiveness of that method as perceived by users.     

嵌入式系统软硬件功能分配的研究

首先简要介绍了嵌入式系统及其传统的顺序设计方法和协同设计方法，然后论述了软硬件划分问题的由来、软硬件划分在协同设计中的地位、发展过程、主要问题及技术难点。     

An interactive co-evolutionary CAD system for garment pattern design

Traditional CAD (Computer-Aided Design) methods in garment pattern design (GPD) fail to utilize the knowledge of experts for inexperienced designers. Moreover, the interactive and co-evolutionary features are not supported. We propose an interactive co-evolutionary CAD system for GPD (ICE-GCAD). The functionality model, modular architecture and data flow of the system are proposed. Then, the interactive co-evolutionary system whose core module is an immune-inspired co-evolutionary algorithm is studied. Finally, the flow of co-design in the system is proposed. As a case demonstration, we study a design sample of a leisure shirt. The experimental studies show that our approach has promising performance and appealing effects. We believe ICE-GCAD is applicable to support the collaboration among garment designers and experts.     

Formation-Containment Control Using Dynamic Event-Triggering Mechanism for Multi-Agent Systems

The paper proposes a novel approach for formation-containment control based on a dynamic event-triggering mechanism for multi-agent systems. The leader-leader and follower-follower communications are reduced by utilizing the distributed dynamic event-triggered framework. We consider two separate sets of design parameters: one set comprising control and dynamic event-triggering parameters for the leaders and a second set similar to the first one with different values for the followers. The proposed algorithm includes two novel stages of co-design optimization to simultaneously compute the two sets of parameters. The design optimizations are convex and use the weighted sum approach to enable a structured trade-off between the formation-containment convergence rate and associated communications. Simulations based on non-holonomic mobile robot multi-agent systems quantify the effectiveness of the proposed approach.      

面向RTOS的嵌入式软件模拟器构造与实现方法

提出一种快速嵌入式软件验证工具——RTOS软件模拟器。在RTOS软件模拟器验证方法中,利用RTOS模块化、层次化设计特点,快速实现嵌入式软件在不同目标机器间的代码移植,通过扩展RTOS API功能,建立硬件模拟驱动,实现软件模拟器和硬件模拟器通信连接和协同模拟同步控制。RTOS软件模拟器克服ISS速度低的缺点,从更高层次验证嵌入式软件功能。     

QoS-oriented design of embedded systems with specification PEARL

Only recently have methodical tools adequate to design real-time systems been formally introduced in design methodologies. Naturally, they were present from the beginning, but due to the large diversity of embedded systems’ areas of deployment, specially dedicated formalisms have been developed and used. High-level language programming and integration of modeling formalisms into design methods eased the development of more complex real-time applications. With the emerging object-oriented programming languages and design methods, their integration into larger information systems has become more transparent. It was the UML methodology, however, which eventually merged also the design methods and concepts of real-time systems into a consistent whole. It took a large consortium and a long process to persuade industry of the benefits the new integral methodology can offer. On the other hand, there are some trade-offs, and there are some features not completely covered, yet. Here, a different, more straightforward approach to program and design (embedded) real-time systems is presented. Since it emerged from the real-time community, it includes most features relevant there. Independent of the UML profile for schedulability, performance and time specification, a profile was devised for use in PEARL-oriented UML design. The strengths of the mentioned language and design methods for QoS-oriented design of (embedded) real-time systems are emphasised throughout this article.     

一种基于动态二进制翻译的硬件支持Profile技术

传统的基于动态二进制翻译器的profiling策略分为3种:基于基本块、基于跳转边、基于路径跟踪。使用纯软件的profiling系统一般地说会带来平均30%的性能开销。如果在动态优化中得到硬件的支持,系统的整体性能将得到显著的提高。其中,软硬件协同设计中的难点,就是软硬件之间的通信开销和软硬件划分。该文针对动态二进制翻译中的优化阶段,使用一种硬件支持的运行是profile收集新方法来取代纯软件的profiling方法,把软硬件之间的通信开销降到最低,并以此来提高动态二进制翻译的整体性能。此方法可以在运行时准确地,并且以很小的开销收集Profile信息,从而更好的优化系统。     

SystemC:一种新的系统建模语言

文章介绍了一种国外正在研究的新的系统建模语言SystemC，因其较好地结合了面向对象的设计方法和硬件建模的特点，从而有望解决系统建模和HW／SW协同设计中等一系列问题。