A methodology to reduce the design lifecycle of real-time embedded control systems

There are two gaps in the typical design V-process used for real-time embedded control systems. The first one is due to the manual translation of control laws into a software specification; the second one is due to the manual implementation of this specification onto distributed architecture while satisfying real-time constraints. Indeed, the correctness and efficiency of these two translations mainly rely on the skill of engineers who are subject to errors, the latter requiring many design process iterations to be corrected. We propose to fill the first gap between the modeling and the specification phases, firstly by linking the terminologies used by the two communities involved, and secondly by interfacing Scicos a hybrid simulation tool with SynDEx a specification and optimized implementation tool. The second gap is actually filled by SynDEx itself which assists the designer in implementing the control laws onto distributed architecture with the help of optimization heuristics and automatic code generation. We illustrate the proposed approach through a didactic example of inverse pendulum control system.