AutoDEVS: A Methodology for Automating Systems Development

1
AutoDEVS A Methodology for Automating Systems
Development

• By
• Manuel C. Salas
• Advisor Dr. Bernard P. Zeigler
• University of Arizona
• 2008

2
Agenda

• Motivation
• Objectives
• Background
• Contributions
• AutoDEVS
• AutoDEVS to Autonomous Road Survey (DEMO)
• Conclusions
• Future Work

3
Motivation

• Improve systems development to reduce human
  effort, time constraints, and production costs.
• Unify every step of development and integration
  from business modeling to application
  deployment.
• Overcome the "incoherence problem" between
  different stages of the development process.
• Introduce automation in the development of
  systems to increase productivity and hide
  complexity.

4
Objectives

• To provide a methodology to increase
  productivity by automating the life cycle process
  of a system.
• To exploit model continuity to reduce
  incoherence between development phases.
• To help developers identify and focus on the
  most critical parts of the system.
• To provide a methodology that allows developers
  to create high performance distributed real-time
  systems that are extensible flexible,
  interoperable, reusable, and reliable.

5
Background

• Many Organizations make use of the Systems
  Development Life Cycle (SDLC) methodologies.

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Background (Cont)

• Alternatives to the SDLC methodologies.

7
Background (Cont)

• M S Development Tools

• Pros
• Unifies the project team by providing a set of
  integrated tools .
• Automatic code generation to reduce development
  risk.
• UML model debugger
• -----------------------------------
• Cons
• Focuses on design not on requirements.
• Doesnt support concurrency in Statechart
  Diagrams.
• Doesnt support Activity Diagrams, i.e.
  simulation, verification, test case gen.

Rational Rose Real-Time
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Contributions

• Introduce AutoDEVS as a methodology to automate
  the development of complex, distributed,
  real-systems.
• Demonstrate that this methodology overcomes the
  incoherence problem between different stages of
  design thru model continuity.
• Develop a distributed simulation-based system
  for an autonomous robotic survey to show the
  powers of AutoDEVS.
• Provide a solution to automate the constant road
  supervision needed to improve productivity and
  reduce human efforts in a mine .

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AutoDEVS

• AutoDEVS is based on the Discrete Event
  Specification System (DEVS) and SES formalism.
• Provides a Methodology to
• Automate the development of DEVSJAVA models to
  increase productivity and focus on the real
  aspects of the system.
• Exploit model continuity to reduce incoherence
  between development phases by following the
  Modeling-Simulation-Execution approach.
• Go from a spreadsheet containing requirements
  specifications to a real-time executing system.
• Allow alternative models to be selected,
  generated and evaluated.

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AutoDEVS GUI
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AutoDEVS Methodolgy
Define Requirements
Capture Spreadsheet Data
Generate FD-DEVS Models (behavior)
Generate DEVS Models (structure)
Update PES
Automatic
Extract Structural Aspects
Transform PES to DEVSJAVA
Create Test Models
Verify Created Models
Simulate
Extract Behavioral Aspects
Manual
12
AutoDEVSMethodology (Cont)
Define Requirements
Capture Spreadsheet Data
Generate FD-DEVS Models (behavior)
Generate DEVS Models (structure)
Update PES
Automatic
Extract Structural Aspects
Transform PES to DEVSJAVA
Create Test Models
Verify Created Models
Simulate
Extract Behavioral Aspects
Manual
13
AutoDEVSMethodology (Cont)
Define Requirements
Capture Spreadsheet Data
Generate FD-DEVS Models (behavior)
Generate DEVS Models (structure)
Update PES
Automatic
Extract Structural Aspects
Transform PES to DEVSJAVA
Create Test Models
Verify Created Models
Simulate
Extract Behavioral Aspects
Manual
14
AutoDEVSMethodology (Cont)
Define Requirements
Capture Spreadsheet Data
Generate FD-DEVS Models (structure)
Generate DEVS Models (behavior)
Update PES
Automatic
Extract Structural Aspects
Transform PES to DEVSJAVA
Create Test Models
Verify Created Models
Simulate
Extract Behavioral Aspects
Manual
15
AutoDEVSMethodology (Cont)
Define Requirements
Capture Spreadsheet Data
Generate FD-DEVS Models (behavior)
Generate DEVS Models (structure)
Update PES
Automatic
Extract Structural Aspects
Transform PES to DEVSJAVA
Create Test Models
Verify Created Models
Simulate
Extract Behavioral Aspects
Manual
16
AutoDEVSMethodology (Cont)
Define Requirements
Capture Spreadsheet Data
Generate FD-DEVS Models (behavior)
Generate DEVS Models (structure)
Update PES
Automatic
Extract Structural Aspects
Transform PES to DEVSJAVA
Create Test Models
Verify Created Models
Simulate
Extract Behavioral Aspects
Manual
17
AutoDEVSMethodology (Cont)
Define Requirements
Capture Spreadsheet Data
Generate FD-DEVS Models (behavior)
Generate DEVS Models (structure)
Update PES
Automatic
Extract Structural Aspects
Transform PES to DEVSJAVA
Create Test Models
Verify Created Models
Simulate
Extract Behavioral Aspects
Manual
18
AutoDEVSMethodology (Cont)
Define Requirements
Capture Spreadsheet Data
Generate FD-DEVS Models (behavior)
Generate DEVS Models (structure)
Update PES
Automatic
Extract Structural Aspects
Transform PES to DEVSJAVA
Create Test Models
Verify Created Models
Simulate
Extract Behavioral Aspects
Manual
19
AutoDEVS Methodology (Cont)
Define Requirements
Capture Spreadsheet Data
Generate FD-DEVS Models (behavior)
Generate DEVS Models (structure)
Update PES
Automatic
Extract Structural Aspects
Transform PES to DEVSJAVA
Create Test Models
Verify Created Models
Simulate
Extract Behavioral Aspects
Manual
20
AutoDEVS Methodology (Cont)
Define Requirements
Capture Spreadsheet Data
Generate FD-DEVS Models (behavior)
Generate DEVS Models (structure)
Update PES
Automatic
Extract Structural Aspects
Transform PES to DEVSJAVA
Create Test Models
Verify Created Models
Simulate
Extract Behavioral Aspects
Manual
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AutoDEVS Methodology (Cont)
IDE
Define Requirements
Capture Spreadsheet Data
Generate FD-DEVS Models (behavior)
Generate DEVS Models (structure)
Update PES
Automatic
Extract Structural Aspects
FD-DEVS
Transform PES to DEVSJAVA
Create Test Models
Verify Created Models
Simulate
Extract Behavioral Aspects
SESBuilder
Manual
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AutoDEVS Methodolgy
SimView
Define Requirements
Capture Spreadsheet Data
Generate FD-DEVS Models (behavior)
Generate DEVS Models (structure)
Update PES
Automatic
Extract Structural Aspects
Transform PES to DEVSJAVA
Create Test Models
Verify Created Models
Simulate
DEVS/SOA
Extract Behavioral Aspects
Manual
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AutoDEVS to Autonomous Road Survey
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DEMO!
AutoDEVS to ARS (Cont)
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Conclusions

• AutoDEVS provides a methodology to automate
  systems development.
• AutoDEVS methodology provides a natural and
  effective way to model distributed real-time
  systems structure, behavior and timeliness.
• AutoDEVS methodology raises the importance of
  simulation to analyze and predict results before
  deployment.
• AutoDEVS allows developers to focus more on the
  core of the system.

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Conclusions

• AutoDEVS combines DEVS and SES formalisms to
  allow the creation of structured information
  hierarchically and efficiently.
• AutonomousRoadSurvey has been developed to show
  how AutoDEVS overcomes incoherence problem.
• AutoDEVS and ARS motivate the industry to
  exploit automated systems to improve productivity
  and reduce human efforts.
• ARS provides a solution to automate the
  supervision of roads within a mine.

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Future Work

• AutoDEVS
• - Integrate with FD-DEVS, SESBuilder and
  DEVS/SOA.
• - Provide more automation for the models
  behavioral aspects.
• - Allow updates without compromising current
  models.
• ARS
• - Improve algorithms to find roads.
• - Extend Runner survey information, i.e. blind
  areas, quality of surface, materials found.
• - Minimize downtime of operation by introducing
  more Runners to the system.
• - Automate the execution of Runners to
  periodically update the Central System and
  Supervisors.

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Questions ?
manuel.salasc_at_gmail.com