SmartyCo: Managing Cyber-Physical Systems for Smart Environments

Abstract

Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) are composed of heterogeneous devices, communicating with each other and interacting with the physical world. Fostered by the growing use of smart devices that are permanently connected to the Internet, these CPS can be found in smart environments such as smart buildings, pavilions or homes. CPS must cope with the complexity and heterogeneity of their connected devices while supporting end-users with limited technical background to configure and manage their system. To deal with these issues, in this paper we introduce SmartyCo, our approach based on Dynamic Software Product Line (DSPL) principles to configure and manage CPS for smart environments. We describe its underlying architecture and illustrate in the context of smart homes how end-users can use it to define their own CPS in an automated way. We then explain how such an approach supports the reconfiguration of smart devices based on end-users rules, thus adapting the CPS w.r.t. environment changes. Finally, we show that our approach is well-suited to handle the addition and removal of CPS devices while the system is running, and we report on our experience in enabling home inhabitants to dynamically reconfigure their CPS.