Multi-Agent Reconfigurable Embedded Systems: From Modelling to Implementation

The chapter deals with reconfigurable embedded control systems following component-based technologies and/or Architecture Description Languages used today in industry. The author defines Control Components as software units to support control tasks of the system which is assumed to be a network of components with precedence constraints. The author defines an agent-based architecture to handle automatic reconfigurations under well-defined conditions by creating, deleting or updating components to bring the whole system into safe and optimal behaviors. To cover all reconfiguration forms, the agent is modelled by nested state machines such that states correspond to other state machines. Several complex networks can implement the system where each one is executed at a given time when a corresponding reconfiguration scenario is automatically applied by the agent. To check the correctness of each one of them, we apply in several steps a refinement-based approach that automatically specifies feasible Control Components according to NCES. The model checker SESA is automatically applied in each step to verify deadlock properties of new generated components, and it is manually used to verify CTL-based properties according to user requirements. The author implements the reconfiguration agent by three modules that allow interpretations of environment evolutions, decisions of useful reconfiguration scenarios and finally their applications. Two Industrial Benchmark Production Systems FESTO and EnAS available in the author’s research laboratory are applied to explain the paper contribution.