Design Methodology for Hybrid Systems

Lero, the Irish Software Engineering Research Centre, advances the state-of-the-art in software engineering for specific domains, initially the automotive sector. Lero is a partnership of academic researchers and industry and is supported by Science Foundation Ireland.

Lero is offering a funded studentship in the area of design methodologies for hybrid systems based in the School of Computing, DCU. This project addresses the specification, design and verification of embedded software systems in environments with continuous dynamics. These hybrid systems are characterised by both discrete and continuous state changes. These hybrid systems, and hence their software components, may also have to meet hard and soft timing constraints. The goal of the project is to develop a design methodology which will assist the user in developing a specification that not only captures the behaviour of the embedded software but also captures a description of the continuous dynamics of the environment being controlled by the software. The design methodology will guide the user from the initial analysis phase through to architectural and detailed design phases. In order to encourage adoption of the methodology it is vital that:

  • the methodology be supported by a toolset; and
  • the initial stages of the methodology uses notations and design practices that are commonly used by the designers in the targeted industrial domain.
This project will target the Automotive Software domain. Automotive embedded developers have found that software development costs increased between 1999 and 2002 to exceed one-third of total automobile production costs. Key factors driving the rise of software development costs in automotive embedded projects include increasing electronic content to satisfy safety, fuel economy standards, environmental requirements, comfort and convenience, multimedia, and entertainment services. The electronic control units (ECUs) are challenging automotive OEMs to develop software with increased complexity. A major source of this complexity is accurately modeling the dynamics of the environment in which the software subsystems must operate.

If you have an honour degree in Computing and a passion to do research in System Design Methodologies for embedded systems, please contact email Dr. David Sinclair at David.Sinclair(at)computing.dcu.ie