Toward Conceptual Analysis of Cyber-Physical Systems Projects Focusing on the Composition of Legacy Systems

Abstract

The increase in connectivity and the continued need to evolve existing systems impose on system engineers the reality of dealing with System of Systems (SoS) concept in practice. The composition of legacy systems presents significant challenges, especially when a Cyber-Physical System (CPS) is involved. Due to the complexity of the interactions between CPS computational solutions and the physical environment, added to the operational independence of CPS as constituent system, emergent behaviors might unpredictably emerge when the CPS and other system run to collaborate being difficult to control. The purpose of this article is to present the Discovery and Requirement Canvas method and its contributions on highlighting emergent behavior. Introduced in the context of EMBED-SoSE approach, the method supports the process of designing a CPSoS in the early phases of a project, when the stakeholders' needs, constraints, and alternatives must be analyzed in terms of the integration possibilities of existing constituent systems. An experimental study conducted with 22 senior professionals from the software and aerospace industries validates the practicability of the method Discovery & Requirement Canvas demonstrating its efficacy. The results of the experiment are compared using descriptive and inferential statistics. In addition, the method was applied to a real-world case study in the field of monitoring natural disasters.INDEX TERMS System of systems, cyber-physical systems, Internet of Things, systems engineering, model-based system engineering.