Jan Blech

• Aalto University

We present a methodology for measuring and increasing labor productivity using data collection and its analysis for optimizing production task management. Presented socio-cyber-physical system architecture and its technical implementation comprises a decision-making system that is integrated with a collaborative automated manufacturing system. This...

Digital Twins are increasingly being introduced for smart manufacturing systems to improve the efficiency of the main disciplines of such systems. Formal techniques, such as graphs, are a common way of describing Digital Twin models, allowing broad types of tools to provide Digital Twin based services such as fault detection in production lines. Ob...

The capabilities of dynamicity, flexibility and agile production are enablers to Smart Factory and Industry 4.0. One critical feature to achieve these capabilities is to achieve efficient deployment optimization for automation control applications. However, many factories have used control applications implemented using IEC 61131 rather than IEC 61...

IoT devices typically stream data such as sensor values to other devices including cloud-based services. Analyzing these streams for Cyber-attacks is a challenging task. This is due to the infinite nature of stream-based datatypes. Analyzing streams can require additional real-time processing and computational performance capabilities. In this pape...

The dynamic and flexible deployment optimization of industrial control applications is essential for achieving the goals of Smart Factories and Industry 4.0. In this paper, we are studying distributed IEC 61499 control applications. To achieve the required efficiency and flexibility of the control application deployment, we propose using a Satisfia...

Abstract—We present work on structuring robotics simulation scenarios into components. Components can comprise simulation entities with a physical counterpart such as automated guided vehicles, drones, robots and machines. Components are typically further structured into sub-components, e.g., a robot arm or a gripper and they can be used to build d...

Industry 4.0 and Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) are current trends in the industrial automation world. They require connections of factory networks to the internet. This trend increases the vulnerability of factory networks to attacks. Here, we present an approach that monitors the activities of factory network traffic based on two linear fea...

We present models for automotive software that capture quantitative and qualitative aspects of software systems and the underlying hardware architecture. In particular, we consider different levels of computing power. These range from controllers up to the cloud. We present a modeling approach for software deployment taking different automotive req...

We present models for automotive software that capture quantitative and qualitative aspects of software systems and the underlying hardware architecture. In particular, we consider different levels of computing power. These range from controllers up to the cloud. We present a modeling approach for software deployment taking different automotive req...

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...

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...

Certifying Compilers are compilers that (1) compile programs from a source language into a target language, and (2) check their results for each compilation run by using a separate dedicated checker. In many cases, certifying compilers can guarantee compilation correctness for individual compilation runs, i.e., they guarantee that target code is a...

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...

The use of lightweight formal methods (LFM) for the development of industrial applications has become a major trend. Although the term "lightweight formal methods" has been used for over ten years now, there seems to be no common agreement on what "lightweight" actually means, and different communities apply the term in all kinds of ways. In this p...

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...

Means to support collaboration for remote industrial facilities such as mining are an important topic, especially in Australia, where major mining sites can be more than a thousand kilometers from population centres. Software-based collaboration and maintenance solutions can help to reduce costs associated with these remote facilities. In this pape...

In this report, we present our work in visualization and augmented reality technologies supporting collaboration in manufacturing automation. Our approach is based on (i) analysis based on spatial models of automation environments, (ii) next-generation controllers based on single board computers, (iii) cloud-, service- and web-based technologies an...

Mobile Cyber-Physical Systems (mCPS) consist of cooperating units that often operate in an unpredictably changing environment. Thus, they need to adapt quickly to varying spatial and temporal conditions during operation, e.g., to avoid collisions. The control software of the mobile units has to reflect this complex dynamics, and traditional device-...

This paper presents a framework to apply property-based testing (PBT) on top of temporal formal models. The aim of this work is to help software engineers to understand temporal models that are presented formally and to make use of the advantages of formal methods: the core time-based constructs of a formal method are schematically translated to th...

This report presents our SmartSpace event handling framework for managing smart-grids and renewable energy installations. SmartSpace provides decision support for human stakeholders. Based on different datasources that feed into our framework, a variety of analysis and decision steps are supported. These decision steps are ultimately used to provid...

This paper presents a framework to apply property-based testing (PBT) on top of temporal formal models. The aim of this work is to help software engineers to understand temporal models that are presented formally and to make use of the advantages of formal methods: the core time-based constructs of a formal method are schematically translated to th...

Autonomous systems have become more and more important in today's transport sector. They often operate in dynamic environments in which unpredictable events may occur at any time. These events may affect the safe operation of vehicles, calling for highly efficient control software technologies to reason about and react on their appearance. A crucia...

We present work on behavioral types for software component systems. Components are annotated with automata-based descriptions of their behavior such as possible interactions observable at components' interfaces. The descriptions act as component types and facilitate comparison of components, compatibility checks, correctness and discovery operation...

This report gives an overview of our efforts towards a formalization for a food processing demonstrator plant. Our BeSpaceD framework is used for the formalization. The formalization comprises properties of components and relations between components. We present domain-specific constructs for the formalization of industrial automation facilities an...

This paper presents our ongoing work on spatio-temporal models for formal analysis and property-based testing. Our proposed framework aims at reducing the impedance mismatch between formal methods and practitioners. We introduce a set of formal methods and explain their interplay and benefits in terms of usability.

In this paper, we present our work on monitoring of control software behavior for PLCs. In particular, we are looking at IEC 61499-based software specifications. Monitoring is done remotely, i.e., the interface behavior of function blocks is streamed to a cloud-based service. Specifications are realized using formal languages such as 1) regular exp...

In the past decade, smart energy systems and new solutions for grid technology have become an important topic. New challenges due to the emergence of renewable energy technology have appeared and have been investigated in academia and industry. This covers areas such as energy storage, strengthening of existing grid technology and prediction models...

In this report, we present example data sets and collections for the BeSpaceD platform. BeSpaceD is a spatio-temporal modelling and reasoning software framework. We describe the content of a number of the data sets and how the data was obtained. We also present the programming API in BeSpaceD used to store and access these data sets so that future...

This paper presents our ongoing work on spatio-temporal models for formal analysis and property-based testing. Our proposed framework aims at reducing the impedence mismatch between formal methods and practicioners. We introduce a set of formal methods and explain their interplay and benefits in terms of usability.

The use of standard IT equipment to control machines is becoming increasingly popular mostly due to lower costs. Further, trends and initiatives such as Industry 4.0 and smart factories accelerate the use of standard IT components by demanding interconnected controllers and factory equipment communicating with internet services. This development of...

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...

To guarantee that modern transport systems carry their passengers in a safe and reliable way, their control software has to fulfill extreme safety and robustness demands. To achieve that, we propose the model-based engineering of the controllers using the tool-set Reactive Blocks. This leads to models in a precise formal semantics that can be forma...

In this report, we present some spatio-temporal operators for our BeSpaceD framework. We port operators known from functional programming languages such as filtering, folding and normalization on abstract data structures to the BeSpaceD specification language. We present the general ideas behind the operators, highlight implementation details and p...

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...

We describe our formal methods-based spatial reasoning framework BeSpaceD and its application in decision support for industrial automation. In particular we are supporting analysis and decisions based on formal models for industrial plant and mining operations. BeSpaceD is a framework for deciding geometric and topological properties of spatio-tem...

This paper presents ideas towards automatic monitoring of industrial automation devices by using a cloud based monitoring infrastructure. We are in particular aiming at fine grained timed properties that can be described using formal specification techniques such as behavioral types. Possible applications are in the areas of remote maintenance and...

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...

Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs) are embedded computers widely used in industrial control systems. Ensuring that a PLC software complies with its specification is a challenging task. Formal verification has become a recommended practice to ensure the correctness of safety-critical software but is still underused in industry due to the complexi...

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...

In this paper we present work towards a software framework for robots in the context of the building/construction of next-generation architectural designs. We call these architectural robots. Our software framework is aimed at supporting architectural robots following a chain of processing steps. These comprise iterations on processing and manufact...

We present work on extending IEC 61499 with behavioral types-based specifications. Identifying components and establishing interface specifications is already a key concept of IEC 61499. Components and their interfaces are a well established concept facilitating the development, maintenance, and refactoring of software systems. Behavioral types fur...

Spatial behavioral types encode information on the tempo-spatial behavior of components acting in the physical space. That makes it possible to utilize the well established concept of type systems with its well studied benefits for programming languages, e.g., fast automatic detection of incompatibilities and coercion, also in the cyber-physical wo...

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...

This paper describes a method for the recovering of software architectures from a set of similar (but unrelated) software products in binary form. One intention is to drive refactoring into software product lines and combine architecture recovery with run time binary analysis and existing clustering methods. Using our runtime binary analysis, we cr...

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...

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...

One of the main obstacle that prevents model checking from being widely used in industrial control systems is the complexity of building formal models out of PLC programs, especially when timing aspects need to be integrated. This paper brings an answer to this obstacle by proposing a methodology to model and verify timing aspects of PLC programs....

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...

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...

This report presents our work on behavioral types for OSGi component systems. It extends previously published work and presents features and details that have not yet been published. In particular, we cover a discussion on behavioral types in general, and Eclipse based implementation work on behavioral types . The implementation work covers: editor...

We present work on behavioral specifications of OSGi components. Our behavioral specifications are based on finite automata like formalisms. Behavioral specifications can be used to find appropriate components to interact with, detect incompatibilities between communication protocols of components and potential problems resulting from the interplay...

Programmable Logic Controllers (PLC) and its programming standard IEC 61131-3 are widely used in embedded systems for the industrial automation domain. We propose a framework for the formal treatment of PLC based on the IEC 61131-3 standard. A PLC system description typically combines code written in different languages that are defined in IEC 6113...

We present work on using automata based behavioral descriptions (behavioral types) of OSGi components for monitoring their specified behavior at runtime. Behavioral types are associated with OSGi components. We are focusing on behavioral types that specify protocols defined by possible orders of method calls of and between components and specificat...

We present a method and initial results on reverse engineering the architecture of monolithic software systems. Our approach is based on analysis of system binaries resulting in a series of models, which are successively refined into a component structure. Our approach comprises the following steps: 1) instrumentation of existing binaries for dynam...

Runtime verification (RV) is a successful technique to monitor system behavior at runtime and potentially take compensating actions in case of deviation from a specification. For the usage in safety critical systems the question of reliability of RV components arises since in existing approaches RV components are not verified and may themselves be...

Abstract constraint specifications – such as interoperability contracts – of the behavior of a system are frequently stated as requirements during early design phases. During the development process, these abstract specifications get refined until one reaches a deployable implementation. Especially in systems with components being dynamically added...

We present a formalization of the OSGi component framework. Our formalization is intended to be used as a basis for describing behavior of OSGi based systems. Furthermore, we describe specification formalisms for describing properties of OSGi based systems. One application is its use for behavioral types. Potential uses comprise the derivation of r...

Behavioral types for model-based development comprise abstract behavioral aspects of the models they are associated with. Behavioral types allow checking that a model fulfills these behavioral aspects. Furthermore, as types can be related with each other, they support more complex checks and guarantees like compatibility in composition and refineme...

We present a framework to formally describe probabilistic system behavior and symbolically reason about it. In particular we aim at reasoning about possible failures and fault tolerance. We regard systems which are composed of different units: sensors, computational parts and actuators. Considering worst-case failure behavior of system components,...

Time-Triggered Network-on-Chip (TTNoC) is a networking concept aiming at providing both predictable and high-throughput communication for modern multiprocessor systems. The message scheduling is one of the major design challenges in TTNoC-based systems. The designers not only need to allocate time slots but also have to assign communication routes...