COLLABORATIVE PROCESS OF SIMULATION MODELLING AND EXPERT SYSTEMS IN

REAL TIME

4.1 Introduction

Embedded systems are those in which a digital computing element, typically running control
software, interacts with devices, such as mechanical or electrical units, and external sources
of inputs such as users and the physical environment. The development of such systems is
challenging for several reasons. First, the embedded systems market demands rapid
innovation and assessment of designs. Second, in critical applications, evidence must be
provided to the assurance process that relevant operational scenarios have been considered
from an early stage. Third, the development of expert embedded systems is multidisciplinary
in that software engineers must design controllers that implement laws defined by specialists
in the application technologies, such as mechanical or electronic engineering. Treating the
disciplines separately runs the risk of miscommunication, and inefficiency in handling the
many cross-cutting design concerns. Fourth, a major source of complexity, and hence risk,
lies in the logic of the controller, and particularly of the supervisory controller that manages
higher-level functions such as mode switching, error detection and recovery[1] an aspect of
particular importance in safety-related systems. The move to distributed multiprocessor
control adds further urgency to the need to find ways of managing the complexity of controller
software design.
Model-based development approaches have the potential to address some of the challenges
of embedded systems development. Models produced in the early stages of product
development may be analyzed in order to identify the strongest design alternatives and
provide evidence to the assurance process. Although models can provide a basis for
collaboration between engineers, each discipline has its own established abstractions and
analysis methods. For example, software is typically modelled using discrete-event
formalisms, while mechanical and electrical systems use models based on continuous-time
descriptions of phenomena expressed as differential equations. Effective model-based design
for embedded control systems should bridge this gap.

Modeling and simulation tools are being increasingly acclaimed in the research field of
autonomous vehicles expert systems, as they provide suitable test beds for the development
and evaluation of such complex systems. This chapter describes the simulation modeling and
integration architecture of two types of simulators, namely a robotics and a traffic simulator for
the autonomous self-driving vehicle expert system. This integration should enable
autonomous vehicles to be deployed in a rather realistic traffic flow as an agent entity (on the
traffic simulator), at the same time it simulates all its sensors and actuators (on the robotics
counterpart).
Also, the statistical tools available in the traffic simulator will allow practitioners to infer what

kind of advantages such a novel technology will bring to our every days lives
4.2 Imprecise Computation
Imprecise computation technique has been proposed as a way to handle transient overload
and to enhance fault tolerance of real-time systems. In a system based on this technique,
each time critical task is designed in such a way that it can produce a usable, approximate
result in time whenever a failure or overload prevents it from producing the desired precise
result. (Liu, Shih, Lin, Bettati, & Chung, January 1994)
In a real-time system, many tasks are time crucial, tasks such as a file transfer, a unit of data
transmission etc. These time crucial tasks have timing constraints. This timing begins at the
tasks ready time; the task can begin execution at or after this time. The interval ends at the
tasks deadline; this task must complete and produce its result by its deadline. A failure to this
results in a timing fault. These timing faults occur when a real time system becomes
overloaded and overload conditions are unavoidable. A way to prevent these timing faults
during transient overloads and to make a real time system responsive and robust is to use a
technique called Imprecise Computation technique. (Lin, Natarajan, & Liu, December 1987)

To understand the imprecise computation technique, we note that the bad effects of timing
faults are often tolerable as long as the entire important task is completed before their
deadline. Therefore rather allowing all task be treated equally, the programmer identifies
some task as mandatory, meaning that they must be completed in their feasible intervals and
others less important task as optional, meaning that these tasks can be skipped without
causing intolerable timing faults. In this way the operating system is allowed to skip the less
important task during overloads so that important task can complete in time.
Having this principle of imprecise computation in mind, we can now discuss the collaborative
process of simulation modeling and expert systems in real time. Firstly, the methods used in
integrating simulation modeling and expert systems and secondly, the performance and
behavior of the initially proposed expert system in carrying out tasks in real time.

4.3 Proposed Architecture

A software architecture for the autonomous vehicle simulation in a traffic environment is
proposed. This architecture has a distributed nature, as each simulator must use the
maximum possible resources. It consists of four major modules.

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