-The 8th ACESMB workshop took place on September 28, 2015 at the 2015 ACM/IEEE 18th International Conference on Model Driven Engineering Languages and Systems (MoDELS). The workshop brought together researchers and practitioners who work in the area of cyber-physical systems and apply modelbased architecting techniques and tools. The workshop presented novel approaches, both theoretical and practical, as well as early results of their applications.
The design of embedded and cyber-physical systems with real-time and other critical constraints raises distinctive problems throughout the development process, in particular from system specifications to obtaining correct implementations. On the high-level side, system design is much more an art than a systematic activity, while on the low-level side design teams have to make specific architectural choices and handle non-functional constraints like real-time deadlines, energy consumption, etc., as early as possible in order to streamline the system development process. Model-based engineering techniques have now been established as the norm in industry since they are a major factor for further gains in productivity, quality and time-to-market such complex systems. They provide means to capture dedicated architectural and non-functional information in precise (and even formal) domain-specific models. They support compositional design of systems, in which functional aspects (platform independent) are separated from architectural and non-functional aspects (platform specific) until the integration step, etc. Many of the mentioned topics are emerging research areas, where efforts and results are still expected.
The 8th workshop on Model-based architecting of cyberphysical and embedded systems1 brought together researchers and practitioners interested in model-based engineering to share and explore innovative ideas and experiences that contribute to better architecting embedded and cyber-physical systems, with a focus on approaches yielding efficient and provably correct designs.
Paper talks. 3 full papers had been accepted for presentation at the workshop, out of 4 full papers and 4 short papers, each being peer-reviewed by three independent reviewers. A synopsis of each presentation is given below.
I. Ruchkin et al. discussed dependency loops in the analysis of cyber-physical system designs. The authors defined the concept of dependency loops in the analysis process, as well as a spectrum of various relevant properties of the workflow, ranging from strong convergence to strong divergence. The authors also made proposals for resolving the analysis loops: iteration, constraint solving, and genetic algorithms.
J.O. Blech et al. introduced the concept of behavioral types for space-aware systems as a means to facilitate the development, commissioning, maintenance, and refactoring of cyber-physical systems with spatial characteristics. The approach is intended to be used in industrial automation, for which a formalization and analysis approach were presented.
V. Aravantinos et al. presented AUTOFOCUS3: a toolsuite for the design and analysis of cyber-physical systems. The toolchain is comprehensive, as it covers a broad area of the engineering workflow (from requirements to design to synthesis to analysis, including safety analysis) and is well supported by tools. The authors paid particular attention to the details of the tool integration techniques used.
We would like to thank the authors for submitting their papers at ACESMB and the participants for their lively discussions, thus making the workshop successful. We especially thank our keynote speaker, Dr. Tao Yue, for her insightful presentation. We are grateful to the Program Committee and Steering Committee members for their support during the workshop organization.