Interfacing Real-Time Systems for Advanced Co-Simulation - The ACOSAR Approach

Virtual system development is getting more and more important in a plenitude of industrial domains to reduce development times, stranded costs and time-to-market. Co-simulation is a particularly promising approach for modular and interoperable development. In practice the integration and coupling of real-time systems (especially systems of distributed hardware-in-the-loop systems and simulations) still requires enormous efforts. The aim of the ACOSAR project is to develop both a non-proprietary Advanced Co-simulation Interface (ACI) for real-time system integration and an according integration methodology. These proposals shall act as a substantial contribution to international standardization as the Functional Mock-up Interface (FMI) standard laid the foundations for simulations of physical systems. The results of ACOSAR will lead to a modular, considerably more flexible, as well as shorter system development process for numerous industrial domains and will enable the establishment of new business models.