Ebook: Views on Evolvability of Embedded Systems

Evolvability, the ability to respond effectively to change, represents a major challenge to today's high-end embedded systems, such as those developed in the medical domain by Philips Healthcare. These systems are typically developed by multi-disciplinary teams, located around the world, and are in constant need of upgrading to provide new advanced features, to deal with obsolescence, and to exploit emerging enabling technologies. Despite the importance of evolvability for these types of systems, the field has received scant attention from the scientific and engineering communities.

Views on Evolvability of Embedded Systems focuses on the topic of evolvability of embedded systems from an applied scientific perspective. In particular, the book describes results from the Darwin project that researched evolvability in the context of Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) systems. This project applied the Industry-as-Laboratory paradigm, in which industry and academia join forces to ensure continuous knowledge and technology transfer during the project’s lifetime. The Darwin project was a collaboration between the Embedded Systems Institute, the MRI business unit of Philips Healthcare, Philips Research, and five Dutch universities.

Evolvability was addressed from a system engineering perspective by a number of researchers from different disciplines such as software-, electrical- and mechanical engineering, with a clear focus on economic decision making. The research focused on four areas: data mining, reference architectures, mechanisms and patterns for evolvability, in particular visualization & modelling, and economic decision making. Views on Evolvability of Embedded Systems is targeted at both researchers and practitioners; they will not only find a state-of-the-art overview on evolvability research, but also guidelines to make systems more evolvable and new industrially-validated techniques to improve the evolvability of embedded systems.

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Evolvability, the ability to respond effectively to change, represents a major challenge to today's high-end embedded systems, such as those developed in the medical domain by Philips Healthcare. These systems are typically developed by multi-disciplinary teams, located around the world, and are in constant need of upgrading to provide new advanced features, to deal with obsolescence, and to exploit emerging enabling technologies. Despite the importance of evolvability for these types of systems, the field has received scant attention from the scientific and engineering communities.

Views on Evolvability of Embedded Systems focuses on the topic of evolvability of embedded systems from an applied scientific perspective. In particular, the book describes results from the Darwin project that researched evolvability in the context of Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) systems. This project applied the Industry-as-Laboratory paradigm, in which industry and academia join forces to ensure continuous knowledge and technology transfer during the project’s lifetime. The Darwin project was a collaboration between the Embedded Systems Institute, the MRI business unit of Philips Healthcare, Philips Research, and five Dutch universities.

Evolvability was addressed from a system engineering perspective by a number of researchers from different disciplines such as software-, electrical- and mechanical engineering, with a clear focus on economic decision making. The research focused on four areas: data mining, reference architectures, mechanisms and patterns for evolvability, in particular visualization & modelling, and economic decision making. Views on Evolvability of Embedded Systems is targeted at both researchers and practitioners; they will not only find a state-of-the-art overview on evolvability research, but also guidelines to make systems more evolvable and new industrially-validated techniques to improve the evolvability of embedded systems.

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Evolvability, the ability to respond effectively to change, represents a major challenge to today's high-end embedded systems, such as those developed in the medical domain by Philips Healthcare. These systems are typically developed by multi-disciplinary teams, located around the world, and are in constant need of upgrading to provide new advanced features, to deal with obsolescence, and to exploit emerging enabling technologies. Despite the importance of evolvability for these types of systems, the field has received scant attention from the scientific and engineering communities.

Views on Evolvability of Embedded Systems focuses on the topic of evolvability of embedded systems from an applied scientific perspective. In particular, the book describes results from the Darwin project that researched evolvability in the context of Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) systems. This project applied the Industry-as-Laboratory paradigm, in which industry and academia join forces to ensure continuous knowledge and technology transfer during the project’s lifetime. The Darwin project was a collaboration between the Embedded Systems Institute, the MRI business unit of Philips Healthcare, Philips Research, and five Dutch universities.

Evolvability was addressed from a system engineering perspective by a number of researchers from different disciplines such as software-, electrical- and mechanical engineering, with a clear focus on economic decision making. The research focused on four areas: data mining, reference architectures, mechanisms and patterns for evolvability, in particular visualization & modelling, and economic decision making. Views on Evolvability of Embedded Systems is targeted at both researchers and practitioners; they will not only find a state-of-the-art overview on evolvability research, but also guidelines to make systems more evolvable and new industrially-validated techniques to improve the evolvability of embedded systems.

Content:
Front Matter....Pages i-xii
Researching Evolvability....Pages 1-20
Architecting for Improved Evolvability....Pages 21-36
Complementing Software Documentation....Pages 37-51
Identifying and Investigating Evolution Type Decomposition Weaknesses....Pages 53-68
Transferring Evolutionary Couplings to Industry....Pages 69-88
An Execution Viewpoint Catalog for Software-Intensive and Embedded Systems....Pages 89-106
Researching Reference Architectures....Pages 107-119
A3 Architecture Overviews....Pages 121-136
Linking Requirements and Implementation....Pages 137-151
Workflow Modelling of Intended System Use....Pages 153-170
Supervisory Control Synthesis in the Medical Domain....Pages 171-191
Creating High-Quality Behavioural Designs for Software-Intensive Systems....Pages 193-207
Verifying Runtime Reconfiguration Requirements on UML Models....Pages 209-225
Scheduling in MRI Scans processing....Pages 227-243
Strategy-Focused Architecture Decision Making....Pages 245-260
Balancing Time-to-Market and Quality in Evolving Embedded Systems....Pages 261-278
Industrial Impact and Lessons Learned....Pages 279-299
Conclusions....Pages 301-305
Back Matter....Pages 307-315

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Evolvability, the ability to respond effectively to change, represents a major challenge to today's high-end embedded systems, such as those developed in the medical domain by Philips Healthcare. These systems are typically developed by multi-disciplinary teams, located around the world, and are in constant need of upgrading to provide new advanced features, to deal with obsolescence, and to exploit emerging enabling technologies. Despite the importance of evolvability for these types of systems, the field has received scant attention from the scientific and engineering communities.

Views on Evolvability of Embedded Systems focuses on the topic of evolvability of embedded systems from an applied scientific perspective. In particular, the book describes results from the Darwin project that researched evolvability in the context of Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) systems. This project applied the Industry-as-Laboratory paradigm, in which industry and academia join forces to ensure continuous knowledge and technology transfer during the project’s lifetime. The Darwin project was a collaboration between the Embedded Systems Institute, the MRI business unit of Philips Healthcare, Philips Research, and five Dutch universities.

Evolvability was addressed from a system engineering perspective by a number of researchers from different disciplines such as software-, electrical- and mechanical engineering, with a clear focus on economic decision making. The research focused on four areas: data mining, reference architectures, mechanisms and patterns for evolvability, in particular visualization & modelling, and economic decision making. Views on Evolvability of Embedded Systems is targeted at both researchers and practitioners; they will not only find a state-of-the-art overview on evolvability research, but also guidelines to make systems more evolvable and new industrially-validated techniques to improve the evolvability of embedded systems.

Content:
Front Matter....Pages i-xii
Researching Evolvability....Pages 1-20
Architecting for Improved Evolvability....Pages 21-36
Complementing Software Documentation....Pages 37-51
Identifying and Investigating Evolution Type Decomposition Weaknesses....Pages 53-68
Transferring Evolutionary Couplings to Industry....Pages 69-88
An Execution Viewpoint Catalog for Software-Intensive and Embedded Systems....Pages 89-106
Researching Reference Architectures....Pages 107-119
A3 Architecture Overviews....Pages 121-136
Linking Requirements and Implementation....Pages 137-151
Workflow Modelling of Intended System Use....Pages 153-170
Supervisory Control Synthesis in the Medical Domain....Pages 171-191
Creating High-Quality Behavioural Designs for Software-Intensive Systems....Pages 193-207
Verifying Runtime Reconfiguration Requirements on UML Models....Pages 209-225
Scheduling in MRI Scans processing....Pages 227-243
Strategy-Focused Architecture Decision Making....Pages 245-260
Balancing Time-to-Market and Quality in Evolving Embedded Systems....Pages 261-278
Industrial Impact and Lessons Learned....Pages 279-299
Conclusions....Pages 301-305
Back Matter....Pages 307-315
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