Architectures for Dynamically Coupled Systems

Dynamically coupled collaborative embedded systems operate in groups that form, change, and dissolve—often frequently—during their lifetime. Furthermore, the context in which collaborative systems operate is a dynamic one: systems in the context may appear, change their visible behavior, and disappear again. Ensuring safe operation of such collaborative systems is of key importance, while their dynamic nature poses challenges that do not occur in “classical” system design. This starts with the elicitation of the operational context against which the system will be designed—requiring capture of its dynamic nature—and affects all other design phases as well. Novel development methods are required, enabling engineers to deal with the challenges raised by dynamicity in a manageable way. This chapter presents methods that have been developed to support engineers in this task. The methods cover different viewpoints and abstraction levels of the development process, starting at the requirements viewpoint, and glance at the functional and technical design, as well as verification methods for the type of systems envisioned.