Development of first prototype of an automatic generator of an AUTOSAR model from an EAST-ADL2 model

The process of automobile production is built on a multitude of sub-processes. Industrial companies are therefore seeking a common formalism to define the functional building blocks of electronic systems (equipment and software), intended for use in automobiles, in a complete and unambiguous manner.
In 2003, the AUTOSAR consortium¹, made up of industrialists from the automobile industry worldwide, defined and standardised a technical architecture for automotive electronic and computer systems, which guarantees the technical inter-operability of components coming from different constructors. In parallel, work carried out as part of several European projects (EAST-EEA and ATESST), in which LIST participated, has led to the specification of several versions of a dedicated language (or "DSL", Domain Specific Language), EAST-ADL² and then EAST-ADL² adapted to the functional design of , often complex, systems, placing itself on a more abstract level than AUTOSAR.
Industrialists have therefore had available both standard AUTOSAR, suitable for development of technical architecture and for which tools are available, as well as the current version of a language dedicated to the operational design of systems, available over the last year, for which there it is not, as yet, an industrial tool. Ideally, an industrial process would rest on the two complimentary formalisms: the system would be specified in the EAST-ADL² language, the technical design would then be deduced using AUTOSAR. The industrialists who have tested this approach (Volvo, Continental) have then proceeded to manually rewrite the operational design model, expressed in the dedicated language, into AUTOSAR. As well as increasing the cost involved, this operation leads to errors.
The experience of LIST in the area of formal modelling languages, and its inclusion in the European projects, has led to the specification of the latest version of the EAST-ADL² language, which permitted the graphics editor to be rapidly disposed of for this language, created by specialisation of the generic editor Papyrus (UML2 editor³). As part of the EDONA project of the System@TIC pole, LIST has used this editor to develop tools to assist in the design of automobile systems.
The teams from LIST have reached a first milestone by making an automatic transformer of EAST-ADL² into AUTOSAR models available to Continental, included in the Papyrus editor. Since there is no unique or optimal way to translate a functional architecture into a technical architecture, the transformer can be parameterised: the user can then choose a different strategy if his experiments display insufficient performance or too large a consumption of resources.
Using current research at LIST, industrialists will be able, in the long-term, to provide functional models with useful information for selecting technical architecture and to obtain a first indication of the expected performance (in real time terms in particular).