ACES-MB 2015

8th International Workshop on Model~Based Architecting of Cyber-physical and Embedded Systems (ACES-MB 2015)

Co-located with MODELS 2015

We are pleased to invite you to submit papers to the 8th International Workshop on Model Based Architecting of Cyber~physical and Embedded Systems (previously Model Based Architecting and Construction of Embedded Systems), held in conjunction with the ACM/IEEE 18th International Conference on Model Driven Engineering Languages and Systems (MODELS) at Ottawa, Canada, on September 27th, 2015.

Objectives

The design of embedded and cyber-physical systems with real-time and critical constraints raises distinctive problems throughout the development process, from high-level specifications to verification, implementation, testing and maintenance. This workshop focuses on innovative techniques and methods allowing to specify, construct and bridge the gap between high-level and low-level designs for such safety-critical systems.

Undeniably, on the high-level engineering side, the complexity of embedded and cyber-physical systems has greatly increased during the past few years, while their usage as parts of large systems-of-systems has accelerated. Therefore, architecting cyber-physical and embedded systems has now to take into account complex collaboration patterns and integration of constraints of computational elements and physical parts, which makes it a compelling task.

From the system engineering perspective, many actors in the industry working on complex distributed embedded systems identified the software crisis to be often rooted in a system crisis such that model-based system engineering is becoming the norm in the industry. The formalization of system engineering models and approaches is considered to be one of the major factors for further gains in productivity, quality and time-to-market such complex systems. Although a mature discipline, system engineering is currently renewing at high speed, driven forward by the progress of model-driven approaches and by standards such as SysML or Modelica.

On the low-level design side, there are specific architectural choices that have to be made as early as possible in the process to streamline production. Key non-functional constraints related to, for instance, real-time deadlines and to platform parameters like energy consumption or memory footprint, have to be handled. In lower-level design, the last few years have seen an increased interest in using model-based engineering techniques for two main reasons: (1) they provides means to capture architectural and non-functional information using precise (and often formal) domain-specific models, and (2) they separate functional aspects (platform independent) from architectural and non-functional aspects (platform specific). These aspects are combined later (more or less automatically) via semantic-preserving model transformations to obtain the final system.

The workshop is an opportunity to bring together researchers and practitioners interested in model-based engineering to explore innovative ideas and experiences on architecting and construction of cyber-physical and embedded systems.

Topics

We are seeking contributions at all levels of the construction of cyber-physical and embedded systems, from high-level modeling languages and semantics to concrete application experiments, from model analysis techniques to model-based implementation and deployment. Given the criticality of the application domain, we particularly focus on model-based approaches yielding efficient and provably correct designs. Authors are invited to submit papers on the following non-exclusive list of topics:

• Model-based embedded and cyber-physical systems engineering: system design techniques (compositionality, synthesis, etc.); semantics of system models, refinement of system designs into hardware/software implementations (e.g. scheduling, code generation, compilation, i.e.), integration and interaction of system and software design models; validation of systems.
• Architecture description: position of architecture description languages (ADLs) in an MBE approach, techniques for deriving architecture models from requirements, deriving high-level design models from architecture models; verification and validation using architecture models.
• Capturing and exploitation of non-functional aspects, interactions among functional and non-functional aspects of the design, including but not limited to performance, quality of service, hard real-time constraints, power and resource management, security, etc.
• Domain specific design and implementation languages. Computation and composition models - synchronous languages and paradigms (Lustre/SCADE, Simulink, Signal/Polychrony, TTA, Giotto, etc.), scheduling-oriented models (HRT-UML, Ada Ravenscar) -, component languages (BIP, FRACTAL, Ptolemy, etc.).
• Model-based analysis, verification and validation techniques. Exploit above-mentioned models for formal analysis, verification and validation.

Workshop format

• An introduction by the organizers.
• An invited presentation (name to be confirmed).
• Presentations of accepted papers organized in sessions according to subjects emerging from the submissions.
• A discussion forum about research directions and challenges in model-based design for embedded and cyber-physical systems, as well as controversial questions regarding the state of the art and the state of practice in this domain.

Programme Committee

• De-Jiu Chen KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden
• Arnaud Cuccuru CEA LIST, France
• Patricia Derler National Instruments, USA
• Iulia Dragomir Aalto University, Finland
• Mamoun Filali CNRS - IRIT, France
• Sebastien Gerard CEA LIST, France
• Susanne Graf CNRS - VERIMAG, France
• Gabor Karsai ISIS, Vanderbilt University, USA
• Alexander Knapp University of Augsburg, Germany
• Florian Noyrit CEA LIST, France
• Pierluigi Nuzzo UC Berkeley, USA
• Ileana Ober IRIT - University of Toulouse, France
• Iulian Ober IRIT - University of Toulouse, France
• Necmiye Ozay University of Michigan, USA
• Andreas Prinz University of Agder, Norway
• Alejandra Ruiz Lopez Tecnalia, Spain
• Bernhard Rumpe RWTH Aachen, Germany
• Bran Selic Malina Software, Canada
• Tullio Vardanega University of Padua, Italy
• Eugenio Villar University of Cantabria, Spain
• Thomas Weigert UniqueSoft, USA
• Tim Weilkiens OOSE Innovative Informatik GmbH, Germany
• Virginie Wiels ONERA, Toulouse, France
• Qi Zhu UC Riverside, USA

Organizing Committee

• Iulia Dragomir Aalto University, Finland
• Susanne Graf CNRS - VERIMAG, France
• Gabor Karsai ISIS, Vanderbilt University, USA
• Florian Noyrit CEA LIST, France
• Iulian Ober IRIT - University of Toulouse, France

Steering Committee

• Iulia Dragomir Aalto University, Finland
• Susanne Graf CNRS - VERIMAG, France
• Gabor Karsai ISIS, Vanderbilt University, USA
• Florian Noyrit CEA LIST, France
• Iulian Ober IRIT - University of Toulouse, France
• Stefan Van Baelen iMindsvzw, Belgium
• Mamoun Filali CNRS - IRIT, France
• Sebastien Gerard CEA LIST, France
• Ileana Ober IRIT - University of Toulouse, France
• Bran Selic Malina Software, Canada
• Thomas Weigert UniqueSoft, USA