A development method of time-triggered object-oriented software for embedded control systems

This paper describes a time‐triggered object‐oriented model for embedded control systems and a control software development method based on that model. Conventional object‐oriented models had been based on event‐triggered actions. In contrast, we propose a time‐triggered object‐oriented model for real‐time control. This model, which consists of a set of objects for calculating data values required for control, activates these objects cyclically to implement time‐triggered actions. This paper also shows that a distributed control system having location transparency can be implemented efficiently according to this model. In addition, we propose a control software development method based on the proposed time‐triggered object‐oriented model. This development method can extract objects according to simple operations from control block diagrams used to describe control specifications. This paper also introduces an embedded system‐oriented implementation method that does not consume much resource and presents an application example in a distributed control system for automobiles. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Syst Comp Jpn, 34(2): 43–54, 2003; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/scj.1189