Cyber-physical virtual platforms: Techniques for sensors integration

Cyber-physical systems (CPSs) embed HW/SW devices that implement controlling strategies of physical processes. Such strategies are usually designed as architecture agnostic mathematical models, that are unaware of constraints imposed by the embedded HW platform. As such, the developed strategy may be unable to control the actual system. This implies the need of cyber-physical virtual-platforms (VPs), where an abstract control algorithm can be refined up to its actual SW implementation. This speech investigates the main methodologies for extending standard embedded VPs to cyber-physical VPs that integrate continuous-time components, like sensors and analog interfaces. We examine the theoretical problem of integrating different models of computations and its practical solution through co-simulation, particularly based on the FMI/FMU standards. However, computational bottlenecks discourage in using co-simulation in real cases, thus more innovative solutions must be used, like the automatic abstraction of IP components. Such techniques are mature and well developed if applied to digital IPs, while they are in their infancy for analog IPs. However, the speech presents innovative and affective approaches in this field. Finally, a cyber-physical VP is also useful for checking and estimating extra-functional properties like power consumption, temperature, ageing and functional safety. This would require the integration of plenty of tools, or the generation of extra-functional models to be integrated in the same cyber-physical VP, which becomes the core tool for CPSs design, validation and optimization.