A Behaviour-Driven Development Approach for Cyber-Physical Production Systems

This paper proposes a method for iterative engineering of cyber-physical production systems (CPPS) that allows early testing of virtual prototypes and early involvement of domain experts. It is based on behaviour-driven development (BDD) from agile software engineering, which is adapted to address a set of issues relevant for CPPS engineering including the use of standardised CPPS models, integration testing, test environments, and brownfield development. The paper describes these adaptations and synthesises them into a procedural model of BDD for CPPS. Finally, a prototypical test system for CPPS is presented that partially implements the approach.