Design and validation of Cyber-Physical Systems through model abstraction

Abstract

Cyber Physical Systems (CPSs) are a category of systems of systems (SoS) that integrate physical and computational elements. Such systems have existed for some time, but rigorous design methodologies for CPSs are scarce. The typical design process of a CPS makes use of a large number of models to help answer the wide range of design questions that arise in development. In other words, the design process produces models that describe the various crucial aspects, scopes and system components on different level of detail and abstraction. These partial models can potentially be coupled for effective information propagation across the different modeling perspectives to increase design reliability. However, they are usually expressed in different specialized tools and programming languages as a consequence of the system heterogeneity and the preference of the numerous designers involved. This paper therefore proposes generating abstractions of detailed sub-models, and then embedding those abstractions into system-wide models formulated in other formalisms.