Towards a Well-Founded Software Component Model for Cyber-Physical Control Systems

Cyber-physical control systems (CPCS), and their instantiation as autonomous robotic control architectures, are notoriously difficult to specify, implement, test, validate and verify. In this paper, we propose to integrate hybrid systems and their declension as hybrid automata and DEVS simulation models within a full-fledged and well-founded software component model tailored for CPCS. We present how the resulting comprehensive modeling tool can support the different phases of the software development to provide more reliable, more robust and more adaptable CPCS. The key concept is to provide components with a modeling and simulation capability that seamlessly support the software development process, from model-in-the-loop initial validations, until deployment time actual system verification.