The MechatronicUML Design Method: Process and Language for Platform-Independent Modeling

Several examples of mechatronic systems can be found nowadays in modern cars, production systems, and medical technology. Day by day, the number of innovative functionalities in such mechatronic systems is increasing. These functionalities are realized with complex software. Such software exhibits hard real-time, safety requirements. The adherence to these requirements must be thoroughly analyzed and verified. Moreover, to obtain a significant increment in the reliability, performance, and efficiency of such software, it needs to maintain the self-adaptation of its properties. In order to develop such systems with a high quality and within a short time, we need a systematic and consistent design method. For this purpose, the software engineering group at the University of Paderborn and the Fraunhofer IEM in Paderborn propose the MechatronicUML method. This method provides a comprehensive model-driven process support, that starts from requirements and reaches the executable software after passing through several design and analysis steps. This process improves the comprehension during development and makes complex systems manageable. MechatronicUML emphasizes mainly on: (1) modeling and (formal) verification of reconfigurable software architectures, (2) the coordination among system components in such architectures, and (3) the integration of discrete software events with the continuous behavior of control devices.