Intelligent Container

The Microsystems Center Bremen developed in cooperation with ComNets and the LogDynamicsLab the 'intelligent Container' as an autonomous transport monitoring system for perishable and sensitive goods. The systems links technologies from the fields of RFID, sensor networks and software agents to provide a permanent and freight-specific supervision of each transport package along the supply chain. Local pre-processing of sensor information reduces costs for external mobile communication. A quality prediction model runs on an embedded processor platform that is integrated into the container, truck or semi-trailer. If a risk for the quality of loaded freight items is detected, the autonomous supervision system sends a warning message to the transport operator.

The development the intelligent container is covered by 3 different research projects:

Since 2004: Fundamental research on 'Autonomous Cooperating Logistic Processes' by the Collaborative Research Centre 637 (DFG)

2008 - 2009: First field tests by a transfer project of the Collaborative Research Centre 637 (DFG).

2010 - 2013: Innovation Alliance for prototype development (BMBF).

The project is administrated by IMSAS at the University of Bremen.

URL: www.intelligentcontainer.com

CHESS

Composition with Guarantees for High-integrity Embedded Software Components Assembly

CHESS is a 36-month project of European companies and research institutes and is partially funded by the ARTEMIS Embedded Computing Systems Initiative (https://www.artemis-ju.eu/)

The development of Real-Time Embedded systems increasingly leans toward the adoption of Component-based Development and Model Driven Engineering approaches. The combination of these two approaches promises better mastery of complexity, increased reuse, and easier maintenance, thus reducing the costs and risks of development and deployment.

That very combination however also creates unique challenges for the development of high-integrity software. Two such challenges especially stand out: (1) to develop components that can be certified or qualified individually for provably guaranteed delivery of the required level of service in operation; (2) to preserve those guarantees in an assembly of heterogeneous software components on the target execution platform. Current component-based run-time environments and their associated software development infrastructures (modelling languages, model transformation engines, code generators) address the functional dimension of components, but do not address their non-functional characteristics satisfactorily. The developer should not only consider the functional behaviour and the internal structure of components, but also their non-functional requirements (e.g., timing, input and output accuracy, robustness). Such non-functional requirements should be: mapped onto the architectural model; captured by the expression of extra-functional properties attached to components; and then preserved at run time.

CHESS seeks industrial-quality research solutions to problems of property-preserving component assembly in real-time and dependable embedded systems, and supports the description, verification, and preservation of non-functional properties of software components at the abstract level of component design as well as at the execution level.

CHESS develops model-driven solutions, integrates them in component-based execution frameworks, assesses their applicability from the perspective of multiple domains (such as space, railways, telecommunications and automotive), and verifies their performance through the elaboration of industrial use cases.

URL: http://chess-project.ning.com/

CHARTER

Critical and High Assurance Requirements Transformed through Engineering Rigour

CHARTER - Critical and High Assurance Requirements Transformed through Engineering Rigour - is an ARTEMIS Embedded Computing Systems Initiative project (https://www.artemis-ju.eu/)

CHARTER will develop concepts, methods, and tools for embedded system design and deployment that will enable developers to master the complexity and substantially improve the development, verification and certification of critical embedded systems.

Critical embedded software systems assist, accelerate, and control various aspects of society and are common in cars, aircraft, medical instruments and major industrial and utility plants. These systems are critical to human life and need to be held to the highest standards of performance through formal certification procedures.

CHARTER will ease, accelerate, and reduce the cost of the certification of such critical embedded systems by melding realtime Java, Model Driven Development, rule-based compilation, and formal verification. This approach, Quality-Embedded Development (QED), will push software certification to a new level and thereby significantly contribute to the safety and security of the upcoming age of an embedded software society.

CHARTER project technologies will enable new methods of verification and certification that will streamline the process for certification of crucial embedded systems through the use of higher level languages and Model Driven Development methods and tools.

URL: http://charterproject.ning.com/page/charter-project