A Virtual Playground for Testing Smart Cyber-Physical Systems

Abstract

Smart Cyber-Physical Systems (sCPS) represent a class of systems consisting of many interconnected autonomous computing devices, which actively interact not only with each other, but also with their physical environment (using sensors and actuators). Such systems can be designed to collectively carry out complex tasks in their dynamic environment. Contrary to "plain" CPS, the most important part of sCPS is their software. Their applications can be found across multiple domains (e.g., smart cities, disaster management, and similar, where a coordination and cooperation of a vast number of devices is necessary). A common problem in development life-cycle of sCPS is difficulty of prototyping and especially testing their software as it requires a complex setup of multiple devices, environment, etc. In this paper we present a framework that allows developers to create, simulate, and visualize scenarios for sCPS. The framework represents a virtual "playground", which can be configured with multiple obstacles and other environment elements, and to which virtual devices representing robots, cars, etc. are deployed. As modeling paradigm, ensemble-based component systems are employed since they are quite suitable for designing and developing sCPS.