This paper discusses the Model-Based design approach in the applicative design of Cyber Physical ... more This paper discusses the Model-Based design approach in the applicative design of Cyber Physical Systems and, in particular, focuses upon the abstraction of the Communications resources used in such systems. Two relevant cases are considered in the discussion, namely the HTTP protocol and the ModBUS-RTU protocol. The discussed approach has been implemented in an existing Model-Based technology, TaskScript. The above mentioned protocols, among others, have been made available to the applicative designer at the Model Level, abstracted according to the presented approach. Results are reported, demonstrating the effectiveness of the approach: real case applications have been effectively developed in less than one day.
This paper discusses an IoT framework which allows rapid and easy setup and customization of end-... more This paper discusses an IoT framework which allows rapid and easy setup and customization of end-to-end solutions for field data collection and presentation; it is effective in the development of both informative and transactional applications for a wide range of application fields, such as home, industry and environment. On the “far-end” of the chain are the IoT devices gathering the signals; they are developed used a full Model Based approach, where programming is not required: the TaskScript technology is used to this purpose, which supports a choice of physical boards and boxes equipped with a range of Input and Output interfaces, and with a Tcp/Ip interface. The development of the needed specific IoT devices takes advantage of the available “standard” hardware; the software development of the algorithms for sampling, conditioning and uploading signals to the Cloud is supported by a graphical-only IDE. On the “near-end” of the chain is the presentation Interface, through which users can browse through the information provided by their IoT devices; it is implemented in a Conversational way, using the Bot paradigm: Bots are conversational automatons, to whom users can “chat”. They are accessed via mainstream Messenger programs, such as Telegram(C), Skype(C) or others, available on smartphones, tablets or desktops; unlike apps, bots do not need installation on the user device. A message Broker has been implemented, to mediate among the far-end and the near-end of the chain, providing the needed services; its behavior is driven by a set of rules provided on a per-device basis, at configuration level; the Broker is able to store messages received from the devices, process and forward them to the specified recipient(s) according to the provided rules; finally, finally is it is able to send transactional commands, from users back to the requested device, to implement not only field observation but also field control. IoT solutions implemented with the proposed solution are user friendly: users can literally "chat with their devices", asking for information, providing commands, and receiving alert notifications, all with their favorite (mobile) terminal. To demonstrate de effectiveness of the proposed scenario, several solutions have been set up for industrial applications; such “mobile dashboards” are presently used by managers and technicians to keep track of their machines and plants.
ABSTRACT Object oriented simulation is becoming more and more important, as object based software... more ABSTRACT Object oriented simulation is becoming more and more important, as object based software architectures and platforms are gaining popularity. A prototype CASE environment is under development at CSELT which allows users to specify applications according to the ACE computational model, an object oriented based on the concept of Building Block, in turn derived by the TINA-C architecture. One of the features provided by ACE environment is the simulation of the specifications. The proposed approach to simulation is to first translate the object oriented specification to the process level, to use an already available simulation engine with a good efficiency and reliability and then bring the simulation results back to the object level. The semantics of the ACE language, which includes sophisticated primitives, like asynchronous method invocation, concurrent objects and method guards has been mapped at the process level using appropriate templates. The results show that a good efficiency has been obtained: around one hundred object level events per second are simulated on a state of the art workstation
OSI management is becoming a widely adopted standard in the management of telecommunications netw... more OSI management is becoming a widely adopted standard in the management of telecommunications networks due to its intrinsic openness and flexibility. OSI management applications are structured according to a manager-agent scheme. Agents are software programs associated to network elements with the purpose to turn manager requests into commands issued to the real resources; similarly, agents forward events originated within the
Layout automation of VLSI “custom cell-based” chips consists of two main tasks : the generation o... more Layout automation of VLSI “custom cell-based” chips consists of two main tasks : the generation of necessary layout modules (cells) in a given target technology and the cells placement & interconnections routing. In the CVS system, developed whitin the ESPRIT 802 project, these tasks are carried out by the two tools illustrated in this paper : the Flexible Block Library (FBL) and the Floor-planner (ACCORDO). ACCORDO is presented in the first part of the paper, with some detail concerning the design flow of the floor-plan generation and the strategy adopted to solve each step in this flow. The FBL approach to guarantee technology independence, flexibility and maintainability in module generation is then discussed; significant examples are given for both the tools.
Layout automation of VLSI “custom cell-based” chips consists of two main tasks : the generation o... more Layout automation of VLSI “custom cell-based” chips consists of two main tasks : the generation of necessary layout modules (cells) in a given target technology and the cells placement & interconnections routing. In the CVS system, developed whitin the ESPRIT 802 project, these tasks are carried out by the two tools illustrated in this paper : the Flexible Block Library (FBL) and the Floor-planner (ACCORDO). ACCORDO is presented in the first part of the paper, with some detail concerning the design flow of the floor-plan generation and the strategy adopted to solve each step in this flow. The FBL approach to guarantee technology independence, flexibility and maintainability in module generation is then discussed; significant examples are given for both the tools.
european design automation conference, Mar 12, 1990
ABSTRACT The layout automation of modern VLSI `cell-based' chips relies on the availabili... more ABSTRACT The layout automation of modern VLSI `cell-based' chips relies on the availability of a powerful set of algorithms able to generate the layout of whole ICs, maximally exploiting the cell library and taking advice from the designer through a user-friendly interaction. This paper deals with a new floor planner, ACCORDO, that brings some innovative concepts and facilities to the floor planning task and emphasizes the user-interaction in order to deliver a successful mix between the power of the algorithms and the versatility of `ad-hoc' solutions. Key features of ACCORDO are the hierarchy editor that allows for changes in the circuit partitioning, a tight integration with the module generators, a powerful placement editor and a contour channel router
Simulation is a powerful tool in the development cycle of distributed systems; it has long been s... more Simulation is a powerful tool in the development cycle of distributed systems; it has long been studied and practiced. The present paper presents an approach to timed interactive simulation based on the execution of timed CSP-like models; the language presented is PROMELA+, derived from PROMELA with the extension to temporal quantification. The whole simulation environment, named YES, includes also a statistical analyzer which requests to the executor as many samples as needed to generate the desired estimators with the given properties. The YES simulation environment can be used for a number of purposes during the system development cycle, from evaluation of the specification to the performance forecasting of the system, to system functional and throughput stressing. While the environment has been used for about two years, when a number of systems have been modelled in PROMELA+, work in progress tends to exploit the YES environment as a basic simulation environment: PROMELA+ is see...
Simulation is a powerful tool in the development cycle of distributed systems; it has long been s... more Simulation is a powerful tool in the development cycle of distributed systems; it has long been studied and practiced. The present paper presents an approach to timed interactive simulation based on the execution of timed CSP-like models; the language presented is PROMELA+, derived from PROMELA with the extension to temporal quantification.
The DICIT project1 is introduced, presenting major goals and the applicative scenarios (interacti... more The DICIT project1 is introduced, presenting major goals and the applicative scenarios (interactive TV and home surveillance). A general overview of the ar-chitecture is given; the involved technologies comprise acoustic echo cancellation, distant-talking speech recognition, advanced natural language understanding and dialogue management. In particular, issues related to the understanding system and the design of the dialogue are analyzed. A discussion about envisaged metrics for on-field performance evaluation concludes the paper. 1 The DICIT project: an introduction The DICIT project focuses on the development of advanced acoustic sensor based technologies and the related application to the smart-home environment. The main objective of the project is an automatic voice interaction system with the speaker at a distance of some meters from a set of microphones. Voice input operates as a complementary modality to the remote control (RC), allowing users to control an interactive TV sy...
This paper discusses a full model-based design approach in the applicative development of Cyber P... more This paper discusses a full model-based design approach in the applicative development of Cyber Physical Systems targeting the fast development of Logic controllers (i.e., the “Cyber” side of a CPS). The proposed modeling language provides a synthesis between various somehow conflicting constraints, such as being graphical, easily usable by designers, self-contained with no need for extra information, and to leads to efficient implementation, even in low-end embedded systems. Its main features include easiness to describe parallelism of actions, precise time handling, communication with other systems according to various interfaces and protocols. Taking advantage the modeling easiness deriving from the above features, the language encourages to model whole CPSs, that is their Logical and their Physical side, working together; such whole models are simulated in order to achieve insight about their interaction and spot possible flaws in the controller; once validated, the very same mo...
This paper discusses the Model-Based design approach in the applicative design of Cyber Physical ... more This paper discusses the Model-Based design approach in the applicative design of Cyber Physical Systems and, in particular, focuses upon the abstraction of the Communications resources used in such systems. Two relevant cases are considered in the discussion, namely the HTTP protocol and the ModBUS-RTU protocol. The discussed approach has been implemented in an existing Model-Based technology, TaskScript. The above mentioned protocols, among others, have been made available to the applicative designer at the Model Level, abstracted according to the presented approach. Results are reported, demonstrating the effectiveness of the approach: real case applications have been effectively developed in less than one day.
This paper discusses an IoT framework which allows rapid and easy setup and customization of end-... more This paper discusses an IoT framework which allows rapid and easy setup and customization of end-to-end solutions for field data collection and presentation; it is effective in the development of both informative and transactional applications for a wide range of application fields, such as home, industry and environment. On the “far-end” of the chain are the IoT devices gathering the signals; they are developed used a full Model Based approach, where programming is not required: the TaskScript technology is used to this purpose, which supports a choice of physical boards and boxes equipped with a range of Input and Output interfaces, and with a Tcp/Ip interface. The development of the needed specific IoT devices takes advantage of the available “standard” hardware; the software development of the algorithms for sampling, conditioning and uploading signals to the Cloud is supported by a graphical-only IDE. On the “near-end” of the chain is the presentation Interface, through which users can browse through the information provided by their IoT devices; it is implemented in a Conversational way, using the Bot paradigm: Bots are conversational automatons, to whom users can “chat”. They are accessed via mainstream Messenger programs, such as Telegram(C), Skype(C) or others, available on smartphones, tablets or desktops; unlike apps, bots do not need installation on the user device. A message Broker has been implemented, to mediate among the far-end and the near-end of the chain, providing the needed services; its behavior is driven by a set of rules provided on a per-device basis, at configuration level; the Broker is able to store messages received from the devices, process and forward them to the specified recipient(s) according to the provided rules; finally, finally is it is able to send transactional commands, from users back to the requested device, to implement not only field observation but also field control. IoT solutions implemented with the proposed solution are user friendly: users can literally "chat with their devices", asking for information, providing commands, and receiving alert notifications, all with their favorite (mobile) terminal. To demonstrate de effectiveness of the proposed scenario, several solutions have been set up for industrial applications; such “mobile dashboards” are presently used by managers and technicians to keep track of their machines and plants.
ABSTRACT Object oriented simulation is becoming more and more important, as object based software... more ABSTRACT Object oriented simulation is becoming more and more important, as object based software architectures and platforms are gaining popularity. A prototype CASE environment is under development at CSELT which allows users to specify applications according to the ACE computational model, an object oriented based on the concept of Building Block, in turn derived by the TINA-C architecture. One of the features provided by ACE environment is the simulation of the specifications. The proposed approach to simulation is to first translate the object oriented specification to the process level, to use an already available simulation engine with a good efficiency and reliability and then bring the simulation results back to the object level. The semantics of the ACE language, which includes sophisticated primitives, like asynchronous method invocation, concurrent objects and method guards has been mapped at the process level using appropriate templates. The results show that a good efficiency has been obtained: around one hundred object level events per second are simulated on a state of the art workstation
OSI management is becoming a widely adopted standard in the management of telecommunications netw... more OSI management is becoming a widely adopted standard in the management of telecommunications networks due to its intrinsic openness and flexibility. OSI management applications are structured according to a manager-agent scheme. Agents are software programs associated to network elements with the purpose to turn manager requests into commands issued to the real resources; similarly, agents forward events originated within the
Layout automation of VLSI “custom cell-based” chips consists of two main tasks : the generation o... more Layout automation of VLSI “custom cell-based” chips consists of two main tasks : the generation of necessary layout modules (cells) in a given target technology and the cells placement & interconnections routing. In the CVS system, developed whitin the ESPRIT 802 project, these tasks are carried out by the two tools illustrated in this paper : the Flexible Block Library (FBL) and the Floor-planner (ACCORDO). ACCORDO is presented in the first part of the paper, with some detail concerning the design flow of the floor-plan generation and the strategy adopted to solve each step in this flow. The FBL approach to guarantee technology independence, flexibility and maintainability in module generation is then discussed; significant examples are given for both the tools.
Layout automation of VLSI “custom cell-based” chips consists of two main tasks : the generation o... more Layout automation of VLSI “custom cell-based” chips consists of two main tasks : the generation of necessary layout modules (cells) in a given target technology and the cells placement & interconnections routing. In the CVS system, developed whitin the ESPRIT 802 project, these tasks are carried out by the two tools illustrated in this paper : the Flexible Block Library (FBL) and the Floor-planner (ACCORDO). ACCORDO is presented in the first part of the paper, with some detail concerning the design flow of the floor-plan generation and the strategy adopted to solve each step in this flow. The FBL approach to guarantee technology independence, flexibility and maintainability in module generation is then discussed; significant examples are given for both the tools.
european design automation conference, Mar 12, 1990
ABSTRACT The layout automation of modern VLSI `cell-based' chips relies on the availabili... more ABSTRACT The layout automation of modern VLSI `cell-based' chips relies on the availability of a powerful set of algorithms able to generate the layout of whole ICs, maximally exploiting the cell library and taking advice from the designer through a user-friendly interaction. This paper deals with a new floor planner, ACCORDO, that brings some innovative concepts and facilities to the floor planning task and emphasizes the user-interaction in order to deliver a successful mix between the power of the algorithms and the versatility of `ad-hoc' solutions. Key features of ACCORDO are the hierarchy editor that allows for changes in the circuit partitioning, a tight integration with the module generators, a powerful placement editor and a contour channel router
Simulation is a powerful tool in the development cycle of distributed systems; it has long been s... more Simulation is a powerful tool in the development cycle of distributed systems; it has long been studied and practiced. The present paper presents an approach to timed interactive simulation based on the execution of timed CSP-like models; the language presented is PROMELA+, derived from PROMELA with the extension to temporal quantification. The whole simulation environment, named YES, includes also a statistical analyzer which requests to the executor as many samples as needed to generate the desired estimators with the given properties. The YES simulation environment can be used for a number of purposes during the system development cycle, from evaluation of the specification to the performance forecasting of the system, to system functional and throughput stressing. While the environment has been used for about two years, when a number of systems have been modelled in PROMELA+, work in progress tends to exploit the YES environment as a basic simulation environment: PROMELA+ is see...
Simulation is a powerful tool in the development cycle of distributed systems; it has long been s... more Simulation is a powerful tool in the development cycle of distributed systems; it has long been studied and practiced. The present paper presents an approach to timed interactive simulation based on the execution of timed CSP-like models; the language presented is PROMELA+, derived from PROMELA with the extension to temporal quantification.
The DICIT project1 is introduced, presenting major goals and the applicative scenarios (interacti... more The DICIT project1 is introduced, presenting major goals and the applicative scenarios (interactive TV and home surveillance). A general overview of the ar-chitecture is given; the involved technologies comprise acoustic echo cancellation, distant-talking speech recognition, advanced natural language understanding and dialogue management. In particular, issues related to the understanding system and the design of the dialogue are analyzed. A discussion about envisaged metrics for on-field performance evaluation concludes the paper. 1 The DICIT project: an introduction The DICIT project focuses on the development of advanced acoustic sensor based technologies and the related application to the smart-home environment. The main objective of the project is an automatic voice interaction system with the speaker at a distance of some meters from a set of microphones. Voice input operates as a complementary modality to the remote control (RC), allowing users to control an interactive TV sy...
This paper discusses a full model-based design approach in the applicative development of Cyber P... more This paper discusses a full model-based design approach in the applicative development of Cyber Physical Systems targeting the fast development of Logic controllers (i.e., the “Cyber” side of a CPS). The proposed modeling language provides a synthesis between various somehow conflicting constraints, such as being graphical, easily usable by designers, self-contained with no need for extra information, and to leads to efficient implementation, even in low-end embedded systems. Its main features include easiness to describe parallelism of actions, precise time handling, communication with other systems according to various interfaces and protocols. Taking advantage the modeling easiness deriving from the above features, the language encourages to model whole CPSs, that is their Logical and their Physical side, working together; such whole models are simulated in order to achieve insight about their interaction and spot possible flaws in the controller; once validated, the very same mo...
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Papers by Roberto Manione