Heinrich (Heinz) W. Schmidt

• PhD Bremen, MIEEE, MACM
• Managing Director at RMIT University

Many very large-scale systems are networks of cyber-physical systems in which humans and autonomous software agents cooperate. To make the cooperation safe for the humans involved, the systems have to follow protocols with rigid real-time and real-space properties, but they also need to be capable of making competitive and collaborative decisions w...

Petri nets have found widespread use among many application domains, not least due to their human-friendly graphical syntax for the composition of interacting distributed and asynchronous processes and services, based in partial-order dependencies and concurrent executions. Petri nets also come with abstract semantics, and mathematical methods for...

Petri nets have found widespread use among many application domains, not least due to their human-friendly graphical syntax for the composition of interacting distributed and asynchronous processes and services, based in partial-order dependencies and concurrent executions. Petri nets also come with abstract semantics, and mathematical methods for...

A method preserving cyber-physical systems to operate safely in a joint physical space is presented. It comprises the model-based development of the control software and simulators for the continuous physical environment as well as proving the models for spatial and real-time properties. The corresponding toolchain is based on the model-based engin...

In this paper we present a formal framework for analysis and optimisation of the requirements specifications of systems developed to apply in several countries. As different countries typically have different regulations/laws as well as different cultural restrictions, the corresponding specific requirements might differ in each particular case. Ou...

This paper presents a new approach and design model targeting hybrid designer- and operator-defined performance budgets for timing and energy consumption. The approach is based on Petri Nets formalism. As the cognitive load is typically high while using formal methods, this increases the chances of mistakes. Our approach is focused on the readabili...

Carl Adam Petri wrote his famous thesis over 50 years ago. In another 50 years will a future generation of scientists and practitioners look back on a hundred years of Petri nets? If so, what will they expose as the historic landmarks in their writing on Petri nets, and will these be the same as those the community has considered for the last 50 ye...

Many cyber-physical systems operate together with others and with humans in a joint physical space. Because of their operation in proximity to humans, they have to operate according to very high safety standards. This chapter presents a method for developing the control software of cyber-physical systems. The method is model-based and assists engin...

Internet of Things (IoT) systems continuously collect a large amount of data from heterogeneous "smart objects" through standardised service interfaces. A key challenge is how to use these data and relevant event logs to construct continuously adapted usage profiles and apply them to enhance testing methods, i.e., prioritization of tests for the te...

Internet of Things (IoT) systems continuously collect a large amount of data from heterogeneous ``smart objects'' through standardised service interfaces. A key challenge is how to use these data and relevant event logs to construct continuously adapted usage profiles and apply them to enhance testing methods, i.e., prioritization of tests for th...

Trends such as the Industrial Internet of Things and Industry 4.0 have increased the need to use new and innovative network technologies in industrial automation. The growth of industrial automation communications is an outcome of the shift to harness the productivity and efficiency of manufacturing and process automation with a minimum of human in...

With standard networking technologies gaining access to the factory floors, remote monitoring and visualization of the collected information is an important topic in the field of industrial automation. Information may be used for remote operation of a production plant, for planning and conducting maintenance, for incident analysis, and for optimiza...

Trends such as Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) and Industry 4.0 have increased the need to use powerfull network technologies in industrial automation. The growing communication in industrial automation is harnessing the productivity and efficiency of manufacturing and process automation with minimum human intervention. Due to the ongoing evol...

This paper presents an approach for modelling and implementation of autonomous humanoid system’s behaviour. The main objective of our project was to analyse possible interaction scenarios between humans and autonomous robots, and to elaborate a framework for providing flexible guided tour options, utilising the features of humanoid PAL REEM robot....

The goal of this paper is to provide a literature review of gender diversity aspects within the field of Software Architecture (SA). The attempt of conducting a systematic literature review led to an interesting result: there are almost no papers to review. Only one article was published within this field. To analyse the situation we made the searc...

The enabling of scientific experiments increasingly includes data, software, computational and simulation elements, often embarrassingly parallel, long running and data-intensive. Frequently, such experiments are run in a cloud environment or on high-end clusters and supercomputers. Many disciplines in sciences and engineering (and outside computer...

This paper presents an approach for an intelligent speed validation and adaptation. The approach focuses on formal modelling of the corresponding smart vehicle units, to increase the road safety as well as to allow formal analysis of the smart vehicle behaviour. We suggest a number of models for speed check/limitation units, which reflect differenc...

Cloud computing provides a great opportunity for scientists, as it enables large-scale experiments that cannot are too long to run on local desktop machines. Cloud-based computations can be highly parallel, long running and data-intensive, which is desirable for many kinds of scientific experiments. However, to unlock this power, we need a user-fri...

This paper presents how collaborative industrial project are embedded into engineering curriculum at two departments: School of Science and the School of Engineering, at RMIT University, Australia. We introduce general structure of the industrial projects as Work Integrated Learning (WIL) modules, as well as provide a number of examples of recently...

Virtual Experience Portals are mobile stereoscopic ultra high definition LCD displays with human interface sensors, which can be combined into a reconfigurable development platform for shared immersive virtual and augmented reality experiences. We are targeting applications in, for example, industrial automation, serious games, scientific visualiza...

The rapid evolution of software necessitates effective fault detection within increasingly restricted execution times. To improve the effectiveness of the regression testing required for extensive fault detection, test cases have to be prioritized. The test cases with the higher chance of capturing faults are executed earlier in the series. This pr...

This paper presents an approach for application of time-triggered paradigm to the domain of autonomous systems. Autonomous systems are intensively used in areas, or situations, which could be dangerous to humans or which are remote and hardly accessible. In the case when an autonomous system is safety critical and should react to the environmental...

Metamorphic Testing (MT) aims to alleviate the oracle problem. In MT, testers define metamorphic relations (MRs) which are used to generate new test cases (referred to as follow-up test cases) from the available test cases (referred to as source test cases). Both source and follow-up test cases are executed and their outputs are verified against th...

This paper presents a formal framework for modeling and analysis of data and control flow dependencies between components or services within remotely deployed distributed systems. This work aims at elaborating for a concrete system, which parts of the system (or system model) are necessary to check a given property. The approach allows services and...

Cloud computing provides a great opportunity for scientists, as it enables large-scale experiments that cannot are too long to run on local desktop machines. Cloud-based computations can be highly parallel, long running and data-intensive, which is desirable for many kinds of scientific experiments. However, to unlock this power, we need a user-fri...

Usability and readability features are crucial on all phases of software development process as well as while applying the developed software. A hard-to-read and hard-to-understand model of a complicated system might provide more confusion that clarification and development support. A hard-to-use technology or system might lead to its misuse or eve...

A method preserving cyber-physical systems to operate safely in a joint physical space is presented. It comprises the model-based development of the control software and simulators for the continuous physical environment as well as proving the models for spatial and real-time properties. The corresponding toolchain is based on the model-based engin...

One of the main challenges for large-scale computer clouds dealing with massive real-time data is in coping with the rate at which unprocessed data is being accumulated. Transforming big data into valuable information requires a fundamental re-think of the way in which future data management models will need to be developed on the Internet. Unlike...

This paper presents an approach towards intelligent route planning in public transport systems. The approach focuses on formal modelling of the semi-dynamic intelligent route planning and optimisation. For these purposes, it is essential to have a well developed formal model covering real-time and space aspects. The proposed solution allows designe...

We present our framework for visualization, simulation and validation of cyber-physical systems in industrial automation during development, operation and maintenance. System models may represent an existing physical part – for example an existing robot installation – and a software simulated part – for example a possible future extension of the ph...

We are developing the Virtual Experiences (Vx)Lab, a research and research training infrastructure and capability platform for global collaboration. VxLab comprises labs with visualisation capabilities, including underpinning networking to global points of presence, videoconferencing and high-performance computation, simulation and rendering, and s...

This paper introduces an architectural framework for developing systems of systems, where the development plants are geographically distributed across different countries. The focus of our ongoing work is on architectural sustainability, in the sense of cost-effective longevity and endurance, and on quality assurance from the perspectives of integr...

Increasingly, various services are deployed and orchestrated in the cloud to form global, large-scale systems. The global distribution, high complexity, and physical separation pose new challenges into the quality assurance of such complex services. One major challenge is that they are intricately connected with the spatial and temporal characteris...

The rapid increase of software-intensive systems' size and complexity makes it infeasible to exhaustively run testing on the low level of source code. Instead, the testing should be executed on the high level of system architecture, i.e., at a level where component or subsystems relate and interoperate or interact collectively with the system envir...

Developing a system for different contexts (e.g., countries, organisations and situations) means that the requirements for the system can differ in diverse cases. The challenge is to deal with this diversity in a systematic way, taking account of variance in compliance, and avoiding contradictions. In this paper, we describe a framework for analysi...

We present our ongoing work on requirements specification and analysis for the geographically distributed software and systems. Developing software and systems within/for different countries or states or even within/for different organisations means that the requirements to them can differ in each particular case. These aspects naturally impact on...

The enabling of scientific experiments that are embarrassingly parallel, long running and data-intensive into a cloud-based execution environment is a desirable, though complex undertaking for many researchers. The management of such virtual environments is cumbersome and not necessarily within the core skill set for scientists and engineers. We pr...

Emergency management benefits from techniques such as the eCall that allow an automatic transmission of vehicle data and location to initiate response operations in case of an accident. Such operations may comprise the deployment of ambulances and recovery vehicles. Based on available data one can decide on the type of ambulances, police and other...

In this paper, we present our vision of the integration of human factors engineering into the software development process. The aim of this approach is to improve the quality of software and to deal with human errors in a systematic way.

In many cases we need to represent on the same abstraction level not only system components but also processes within the system, and if for both representation different frameworks are used, the system model becomes hard to read and to understand. We suggest a solution how to cover this gap and to reconcile component and process views on system re...

Dieser Aufsatz gibt einen Rückblick auf unvergessene Begegnungen mit Lutz Wegner und resümiert einige gemeinsame oder inhaltlich überlappende wissenschaftliche Arbeiten.

We present work towards using ontological information to facilitate collaborative tasks during operation, maintenance and service of industrial automation facilities. We use semantic models as an additional layer for a collaboration framework to enable automatic reasoning, decision support and knowledge sharing among multiple parties. Documents suc...

We present work towards a toolchain that combines our existing tools Reactive Blocks and BeSpaceD with our remote collaboration and visualization facility VxLab. Software development in areas such as oil and gas, mining or automation is subject to remote configuration and maintenance of installations. Different reasons are driving this trend includ...

One of the main challenges for large-scale computer clouds dealing with massive real-time data is in coping with the rate at which unprocessed data is being accumulated. Transforming big data into valuable information requires a fundamental re-think of the way in which future data management models will need to be developed on the Internet. Unlike...

This paper presents a formal approach to modelling and analysis of data and control flow dependencies between services within remotely deployed distributed systems of services. Our work aims at elaborating for a concrete system, which parts of the system (or system model) are necessary to check a given property. The approach allows services decompo...

We describe our ongoing work and view on simulation, validation and visualization of cyber-physical systems in industrial automation during development, operation and maintenance. System models may represent an existing physical part - for example an existing robot installation - and a software simulated part - for example a possible future extensi...

A system may fail due to an internal bug or a fault in its execution environment. Incorporating fault tolerance strategies enables such system to complete its function despite the failure of some of its parts. Prior to the execution of some fault tolerance strategies, failure detection is needed. Detecting incorrect output, for instance, assumes th...

In this report, we present work towards a framework for modeling and checking behavior of spatially distributed component systems. Design goals of our framework are the ability to model spatial behavior in a component oriented, simple and intuitive way, the possibility to automatically analyse and verify systems and integration possibilities with o...

Using probabilities in the formal-methods-based development of safety-critical software has quickened interests in academia and industry. We address this area by our model-driven engineering method for reactive systems SPACE and its tool-set Reactive Blocks that provide an extension to support the modeling and verification of real-time behaviors. T...

An appropriate system model gives developers a better overview, and the ability to fix more inconsistencies more effectively and earlier in system development, reducing overall effort and cost. However, modelling assumes abstraction of several aspects of the system and its environment, and this abstraction should be not overlooked, but properly tak...

This paper presents an approach for modeling and verification of components controlling behaviour of safety-critical systems in their physical environment. In particular, we introduce the modeling language FocussT that is centred on specifying time and space aspects. Verifications can be carried out using the interactive semi-automatic proof assist...

Cloud computing presents a unique opportunity for science and engineering with benefits compared to traditional high-performance computing, especially for smaller compute jobs and entry-level users to parallel computing. However, doubts remain for production high-performance computing in the cloud, the so-called science cloud, as predictable perfor...

We present a semi-automated approach and framework for cost-aware recovery from service inconsistency arising due to unreliable service actions. A range of costs such as time are parameterised and modelled generically using cost algebras. With respect to a user-provided business specification, we distinguish end-state consistency, which must be ach...

A Galois connection is stated between a knowledge base and queries over this knowledge. Queries are stated as conjunctions. Both the knowledge and queries are represented by certain graphs. This Galois connection gives rise to lattices of pattern concepts implicitly contained in the theory (all derivable facts) over the knowledge base. The formal f...

Service selection is the first step in customer life cycle management where services are selected to meet a customer's goals or objectives, personalised to the circumstances of the customer. The aim of this paper is twofold: (1) to develop concepts and algorithms for goal-directed service selection; and (2) to compare and reconcile our goal-directe...

MS for long-term maintenance and new developments. CCP4 libraries have been created and shaped over many years, and concentrate a vast experience of building crystallographic software. In the talk, I will give an overview of CCP4 libraries and describe their general concepts and functionality.

Contract models underlying architecture-level verification methods must suit a range of different accuracy vs analytical complexity tradeoffs depending on domain. For example, trustworthiness in safety-critical systems is enabled by representational simplicity leading to comprehensible proofs while real-time systems require precise characterisation...

Failure in long running grid applications is arguably inevitable and costly. Therefore, fault tolerance (FT) support for grid applications is needed. This paper evaluates an extension of our prior work on Recovery Aware Components (RAC), a component based FT approach. Our extension utilizes the grid application architecture according to a small num...

The Intelligent Collaborative Care Management (ICCM) project offers a comprehensive framework and architecture for understanding and helping to manage the complete life cycle of customer care. This framework formally captures the main components of providing a customer with a number of possibly interrelated services by various service providers. Th...

Green ICT Practices fall in two different extremes of either only recommendations to reduce the resource usage such as electricity, or high level strategic management techniques such as Green Balanced Scorecard. The one extreme is very micro level operational approach and the other extreme is just paper strategies without a roadmap for total sustai...

Increasing resource consumption by business organizations is impacting the environment and resulting in changes to climatic patterns. The use of Information Technology (IT) and related systems are further contributing to sustainability issues and challenges within business. Hence it becomes imperative for enterprises to formulate their IT Strategie...

Customer Life Cycle Management (CLCM) is concerned with the advancement of contractual relationships between customers and service providers through different stages. The aim is to eventually reach a stage where a customer is loyal to a product or an institution. To this end, CLCM involves the monitoring of contractual relationships, including the...

Enterprise Architecture deals with the structure of an enterprise, relationships and interactions of its units. It provides a holistic approach to reconcile IT and Business concerns in an enterprise. Virtual Enterprises are collaborative ad-hoc alliances of multiple enterprises for a specific business opportunity. First we discuss both paradigms an...

In customer life cycle management, service providers are expected to deliver services to meet customer objectives in a manner governed by some contract or agreement. When human agents are involved as contract parties (either as customers or service providers), service delivery failures may occur as a result of changes, inconsistencies, or “deficits...

Increasing resource consumption by business organizations is impacting the environment and resulting in changes to climatic patterns. The use of Information Technology (IT) and related systems are further contributing to sustainability issues and challenges within business. Hence it becomes imperative for enterprises to formulate their IT Strategie...

Green ICT Practices fall in two different extremes of either only recommendations to reduce the resource usage such as electricity, or high level strategic management techniques such as Green Balanced Scorecard. The one extreme is very micro level operational approach and the other extreme is just paper strategies without a roadmap for total sustai...

Two human pathogenic bacteria, Staphylococcus aureus CIP 68.5 and Pseudomonas aeruginosa ATCC 9025, were adsorbed onto surfaces containing Ti thin films of varying thickness to determine the extent to which nanoscale surface roughness influences the extent of bacterial attachment. A magnetron sputter thin film system was used to deposit titanium fi...

Enterprise Architecture deals with the structure of an enterprise, relationships and interactions of its units. It provides a holistic approach to reconcile IT and Business concerns in an enterprise. Virtual Enterprises are collaborative ad-hoc alliances of multiple enterprises for a specific business opportunity. This paper looks into both the par...

Failure in grids is costly and inevitable. Existing fault tolerance (FT) mechanisms are typically defensive and reactive, thus unnecessarily costly. In this paper we propose a hybrid FT approach, recovery aware component (RAC), combining reactive and proactive FT, with failure recovery or aversion of user-defined granularity, by component-orientati...

The article introduces a representation of a formal context by an undirected graph called a context graph with the formal objects being the nodes of the graph. We use as a defining property for this graph that it contains every concept extent as a connected subgraph. The graph is not uniquely defined by this property — we focus on those graphs that...

Redundancy can improve the availability of components in service-oriented systems. However, predicting and quan- tifying the effects of different redundancy strategies can be a complex task. In our work, we have taken an architecture based approach to the modeling, predicting and monitoring of properties in distributed software systems. This paper...

We propose a novel methodology for analysing change propagation in software using the domain-level behavioural model of a system. We hypothesize that change propagation analysis is feasible based purely on the information visible and understandable to domain experts, trading some accuracy for productivity. Such a method is independent of formal arc...

The aim of our research is to provide a unified model for the composition and management of consumer care services. We identify design, composition, distribution and management as key stages of this model and propose an Intelligent Collaborative Care Management (ICCM) System as its realisation. The distribution and management stages are implemented...

Service-Oriented Computing (SOC) is an emerging paradigm for developing software systems that employ services. Presently there is already much research effort in the areas of service discovery and orchestration, business process modelling, and the semantic web. While these are all important aspects for moving towards the pervasive adoption of SOC,...

Software components are suitable vehicles to introduce advanced analysis techniques in a software-engineering context for embedded control software; a feat that has yet to be fully accomplished. We are adopting a component-based approach to con-trol software development. We are extending and combining methods from disparate disciplines, such as pro...

tion testing method with an architectural test coverage criteria. This method is suitable for systems that lack system documenta- tion and is applicable during regression testing and deployment phase. This paper also presents the initial results of an empirical study that validates the proposed test coverage criteria against an existing method in t...

We present a contract-based technique to achieve reuse of known worst-case execution times (WCET) in conjunction with reuse of software components. For resource constrained systems, or systems where high degree of predictability is needed, classical techniques for WCET- estimation will result in unacceptable overestimation of the execution-time of...

Service-oriented computing (SOC) is a promising paradigm for developing enterprise software systems. The initial concepts of service-orientation have been described in the research and industry literature and software tools for assisting in the development of service-oriented (SO) applications are becoming more widely used. Nonetheless, a precise d...