Keynote: From embedded systems to systems of systems

Abstract

Most of today's machines, e.g., automotive engines, production machin ery or even consumer devices, such as a washing machine, are controlled by an em bedded computer system. It is assumed that the widespread integration of these existing embedded co mputer systems and data bases into systems-of- systems (e.g., the Internet of Things, IoT) will provi de new synergistic services, make better use of the available information, lead to new insights, improve current economic processe s and thus create greater wealth. Fueled by the dramatic technological progress in the area of wire-bound and wire-less communication, this integration is already happening on a wide scale in industry. From the viewpoint of computer science, the domain of Systems-of-Systems (S oS) is a relatively new field that poses significant new research challenges. In our view, the differe ntiating characteristics of a SoS compared to a monolithic system are the autonomy of the Constituent Systems (CS), emergent phenomena at the SoS level, uncoordinated evolution of th e CSs and most, importantly, that th e occurrence of faults in the CSs must be considered normal during the operation an So S. This presentation will focus on the issues that are posed by the integration of embedded systems into systems of systems and will refer to the research approach taken in the European AMADEOS proj ect 610535 (Architecture for Multi-criticality Agile Dependable Evolutionary Open System-of-Systems).