Modeling Basic Aspects of Cyber-Physical Systems, Part II
This work addresses the challenge of effectively modeling cyber-physical systems for researchers and engineers, but it is incremental as it builds on previous core language proposals.
The authors tackled the problem of identifying necessary language features for modeling cyber-physical systems by analyzing two complex case studies in rigid body dynamics, showing that their core language supports larger systems like a quadcopter and that adding static partial derivatives would significantly improve model expression for systems like a serial robot.
We continue to consider the question of what language features are needed to effectively model cyber-physical systems (CPS). In previous work, we proposed using a core language as a way to study this question, and showed how several basic aspects of CPS can be modeled clearly in a language with a small set of constructs. This paper reports on the result of our analysis of two, more complex, case studies from the domain of rigid body dynamics. The first one, a quadcopter, illustrates that previously proposed core language can support larger, more interesting systems than previously shown. The second one, a serial robot, provides a concrete example of why we should add language support for static partial derivatives, namely that it would significantly improve the way models of rigid body dynamics can be expressed.