Cyber-Physical System and Contract-Based Design - A Three Dimensional View

This work reports on the experience arising from the master internship contract-based design tailored to safety issues for cyber-physical systems (CPS). The main educational goal is to confront the student with realistic mixed-critical smart CPS systems, using the railway domain and autonomous trains as a case study. The results show that, for this class of systems, education should transition from a 2D to a 3D modeling design space, which is much better suited to visualizing the evolution and the underlying properties of the system. We use contract-based design to properly deal with the integration and composition of heterogeneous components, where safety aspects require special attention. The main scientific and technical results concern the implementation of contract-based design in a 3D tool. Finally, we discuss the teaching methodology underlying the internship and the competences required to address the design of a (critical) CPS by the new generation of students.