Modular Deployment of UML Models for V&V Activities and Embedded Execution

To design embedded systems, multiple models of their environments are typically required for different purposes such as simulation, verification, and actual execution. Some of these models abstract the actual physical environment to facilitate Verification and Validation (V&V) activities. Others capture the connection to hardware peripherals, necessary to deploy the systems on actual embedded boards. However, mapping a system to different environment models for different purposes remains a complex task for two main reasons. First, the environment is often tightly coupled with the system, and the board used for its execution. Second, formal properties verified during the design phase must be preserved at runtime. To tackle these issues, we propose an approach for designing UML models in a modular way and deploying them for V&V activities or embedded execution. This approach uses UML modularity mechanisms to specify the system in a generic way, and to connect it to a given (abstract or real) environment. This technique has been applied on several UML models of embedded systems to analyze their behaviors by simulation and LTL model-checking before deploying them on embedded STM32 boards.