Towards Sustainable Software Architectures for Cyber-physical Systems of Systems
Type
fundamental research project
Start Date
May 1, 2025
End Date
April 30, 2028
Acronym
TaSSAreCt
Status
ongoing
Description
In TaSSAreCt we investigate software architectures for systems of cyber-physical systems (CPS). As it has a major influence on the quality attributes and sustainability of long running software systems, we recognize software architecture as one of the key factors when developing new CPS and integrating existing CPS into a system of CPS (CPSoS). Related research has so far focused on the vertical integration of CPS with the information systems and processes of an organization, from sensors to services, driven by functional requirements. On the other hand, software architectures and the influence of non-functional requirements (NFRs) are primarily discussed in the context of digital software systems, not covering cyber-physical aspects. The first project goal is to investigate how CPS influence existing and novel non-functional properties of software systems and their impact on decisions regarding the architecture of a software system. Following the design science research methodology, we will develop a formal model that links architecture decisions with NFRs (decision forces) and we will instantiate this model based on literature and expert interviews to create a case base of architectural decisions. Sustainability plays a key role as novel category of NFRs that are specifically relevant for the resource constraint components and systems in CPSoS. We will focus on the domain of smart manufacturing with prototypes of distributed production scenarios involving smart factories, robots, and human shopfloor workers, but expect results to be also applicable to other CPS domains. The requirements-and-decision model (ReDeMo) and case base will be integrated into a SysML v2-based modeling toolchain to support the software architect with modeling CPSoS software architectures. The case base will be used to provide suggestions to the architect and to automatically refine and enrich the architectural models, e.g., suggesting suitable architectural styles and service sizes, while keeping the architect in the loop. Thereby, the ReDeMo and case base provide procedural guidance for and documentation of architectural decisions beyond the state of the art as these manual decisions are usually based on extensive trade-off discussions and the undocumented expertise of software architects. The second project goal is to investigate how the architectural models, case base, and ReDeMo can be used to automate the development and sustainable operation of CPSoS. The investigations comprise three main aspects: 1) the generation of software components that encapsulate existing CPS applications and provide standardized interfaces to access their functionalities, including the integration of general purpose software applications that foster interactions within the CPSoS; 2) the orchestration of software components across the edge-cloud continuum, including the self-aware dynamic placement of components at runtime; 3) the configuration and deployment of software components taking sustainability-related NFRs into consideration at the operational level. We expect advances of the state of the art in all three aspects, especially regarding the introduction of sustainability as key factor in the software development starting at the early stage of designing the CPSoS architecture, which will affect all subsequent stages. TaSSAreCt is structured in 4 workpackages. The investigators at HSG focus on the modeling of CPSoS software architectures including new NFRs (WP1), and the model-driven generation of software components (WP2). The researchers at ZHAW investigate the software component orchestration (WP3), configuration and deployment (WP4). We are supported by renown international researchers from software, systems, sustainability, and information systems engineering. Experts from software industry will provide input to develop the case base and multi-stage feedback to evaluate concepts and prototypes, and update the case base and models in re-engineering cycles.
Leader contributor(s)
Spillner, Josef
Member contributor(s)
Funder
Method(s)
Design Science Research
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Item type:Publication, Multimodal Process Monitoring with On-Demand Disambiguation(2026); ; Torres-huitzil CesarType:conference contribution - Some of the metrics are blocked by yourconsent settings
Item type:Publication, AI Assistance for Architectural Decision Making: Domain-Driven Context and Prompt EngineeringGenerative Artificial Intelligence (AI) is receiving a lot of focus in research and practice at present; positions vary from euphoria to "just another tool" to skepticism. Software architecture analysis, synthesis, and evaluation offer many opportunities for AI, e.g., support for knowledge-intensive tasks such as making and recording architectural decisions. It is not yet fully understood how architects can be assisted by AI effectively and efficiently: AI services have to be supervised via input specifications and output validation, requiring architecting skills and application domain expertise. In this paper, we identify architecturally significant requirements to drive the design of a future ecosystem of AI-Assisted Decision Assistance tools (AID). We apply Domain-Driven Design (DDD) to establish a logical component architecture for AID that leverages model-driven knowledge management concepts to accelerate context and prompt/skills engineering and to guard response processing.Type:conference paperJournal:Workshop on Intelligent & Data-driven Engineering for Software Architecture (IDEA-ARCH) - Some of the metrics are blocked by yourconsent settings
Item type:Publication, Granularity Patterns for Programming Cyber-physical Systems with Business ProcessesBusiness process management (BPM) systems and corresponding notations have shown their applicability and flexibility in modeling, automating, and mining business processes in enterprise applications and service-oriented architectures for many decades. Becoming increasingly open and accessible via software-based interfaces, cyber-physical systems (CPS)--systems interacting with the physical world via sensors and actuators--benefit from BPM-based automation too, as they are inherently process-driven and software-intensive. We present four patterns discussing the choice of appropriate levels of detail (granularities) and corresponding decision forces regarding what to model in executable business processes and what to implement in traditional programming languages in CPS software. Two patterns give advice on when to model sensing in CPS at a more fine-grained or on a more coarse-grained level in business processes. Similarly, two patterns discuss these granularity choices for actuation in CPS. These four patterns guide the modeling and implementation of executable business processes that can be used for combining and automating sensing and actuation of CPS.Type:conference paperJournal:European Conference on Pattern Languages of Programs, People, and Practices (EuroPLoP) - Some of the metrics are blocked by yourconsent settings
Item type:Publication, Autonomous Mobile Robots with Business Process Management Systems at the EdgeBusiness process management systems (BPMS) are widely used key components in software architectures of purely digital enterprise applications to organize, execute, and analyze business processes. More recently, BPMS have gained attention from the Internet of Things (IoT) and Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) communities to be leveraged for automation and orchestration of sensors, actuators and more complex devices controlled by software. We present an experience report of using executable business processes and BPMS to orchestrate autonomous mobile robots. The focus of our investigations is on using robots as edge devices acting as local execution platforms for BPMS. We benchmark the impact of a common BPMS on the robot's resources during autonomous navigation and compare with traditional client-server deployments. The experimental results with real robots controlled by a Raspberry Pi demonstrate the feasibility of using common, standard-compatible BPMS in edge computing scenarios to orchestrate CPS.Type:conference paperJournal:European Conference on Software Architecture (ECSA) - Some of the metrics are blocked by yourconsent settings
Item type:Publication, Heterogeneous Application Orchestration in Cyber-Physical Systems(Springer, 2026-06); ; Spillner, JosefCyber-physical systems (CPS) operate across a computing continuum of heterogeneous devices with varying support for execution formats such as containers, Wasm, and native binaries. While Kubernetes is the de facto orchestration standard, its container-centric model and operational overhead make it unsuitable for resource-constrained embedded devices in CPS deployments. We present an adaptive orchestration system that treats format heterogeneity as a first-class concern, enabling distributed deployment across heterogeneous CPS environments. The system selects and places components based on device capabilities and user-specified non-functional requirements (NFRs). Through a MAPE-K control loop, local device agents continuously monitor and report constraints to a central orchestrator. Upon detecting a constraint violation, the orchestrator directs the agents to locally adapt through execution format transformations, redeployments, or component suspensions. Evaluation on a distributed image processing pipeline of five microservices demonstrates deployment initialization in < 5 minutes, rapid execution format transformation in < 3 seconds, and a stable agent memory footprint of 30-40 MB even under active load. These results establish that dynamic, NFR-driven heterogeneous orchestration can be achieved with minimal overhead in resource-constrained CPS environments.Type:conference paperJournal:International Conference on Distributed Applications and Interoperable Systems