An approach to building object models with UML in embedded systems

The UML-based development methods of embedded systems are use case-driven. In these methods, identifying objects that constitute the software system is critical and a hard task, since there is no crisp guidelines. In this article, we propose a systematic approach to building object models in embedded systems. After hierarchically decomposing the system into its parts, the approach consists of firstly converting the use case into a statechart that models states of the concerned system parts and secondly, identifying the objects from the statechart. The proposed approach bridges the gap between the outside behavioral system description as offered by use cases and the system structure represented by the object model.