Demonstrators for Industrial Cyber-Physical System Research: A Requirements Hierarchy Driven by Software-Intensive Design
For researchers and project managers in software-intensive and industrial cyber-physical systems, this framework addresses the common problem of vague demonstrator planning, but the validation is limited and the approach is incremental.
The paper proposes a demonstrator requirements elaboration framework with 5 hierarchical levels to improve clarity and feasibility of demonstrators in research projects, applied to two projects showing effectiveness.
One of the challenges apparent in the organisation of research projects is the uncertainties around the subject of demonstrators. A precise and detailed elicitation of the coverage for project demonstrators is often an afterthought and not sufficiently detailed during proposal writing. This practice leads to continuous confusion and a mismatch between targeted and achievable demonstration of results, hindering progress. The reliance on the TRL scale as a loose descriptor does not help either. We propose a demonstrator requirements elaboration framework aiming to evaluate the feasibility of targeted demonstrations, making realistic adjustments, and assist in describing requirements. In doing so, we define 5 hierarchical levels of demonstration, clearly connected to expectations, e.g., work package interaction, and also connected to the project's industrial use-cases. The considered application scope in this paper is the domain of software-intensive systems and industrial cyber-physical systems. A complete validation is not accessible, as it would require application of our framework at the start of a project and observing the results at the end, taking 4-5 years. Nonetheless, we have applied it to two research projects from our portfolio, one at the early and another at the final stages, revealing its effectiveness.