Team presentation
The Hycomes team-project focuses on research topics related to cyberphysical systems design:
- Hybrid systems modeling, the structural analysis of multimode differential algebraic equations, with a special attention to the Modelica lnaguage and its compilation ;
- The formalization of requirements, using contract-based design methods and interface theories, to support rigorous cyberphysical systems design methods.
Research themes
The Hycomes team is active on the following research topics:
- The design of hybrid modeling languages, supporting the rigorous design of cyberphysical systems. In particular, the team focuses on acausal modeling languages, such as Modelica. These languages are based on differential algebraic equations (DAE). Recent publications of the team address the semantics, structural analysis and code generation for multimode DAE systems.
- The formalization of requirements for cyberphysical systems design. The Hycomes team advocates the use of contract algebras capable of capturing the expected behavior of cyberphysical systems, expressed as trajectory enveloppes of hybrid systems.
- The verification of hybrid systems, using effective algebraic geometry techniques. The objective is to design automated/assisted methods with which invariant properties of hybrid systems can be proved.
International and industrial relations
The Hycomes team has had or has formal and informal collaboration with several actors in the Modelica language and FMI standard communities, including both academic research teams, tool vendors and industrial users. In particular, the team has been or is currently involved in collaborations with the Parkas and Tripop teams at Inria, the DLR in Germany, Dassault Systèmes and Safran.
Overall objectives
Hycomes was created as a local team of the Rennes – Bretagne Atlantique Inria research center in 2013 and has been created as an Inria Project-Team in 2016. The team is focused on two topics in cyber-physical systems design:
- Hybrid systems modeling, with an emphasis on the design of modeling languages in which software systems, in interaction with a complex physical environment, can be modelled, simulated and verified. A special attention is paid to the mathematical rigorous semantics of these languages, and to the correctness (wrt. such semantics) of the simulations and of the static analyses that must be performed during compilation. The Modelica language is the main application field. The team aims at contributing language extensions facilitating the modeling of physical domains which are poorly supported by the Modelica language. The Hycomes team is also designing new structural analysis methods for hybrid (aka. multi-mode) Modelica models. New simulation and verification techniques for large Modelica models are also in the scope of the team.
- Contract-based design and interface theories, with applications to requirements engineering in the context of safety-critical systems design. The objective of our research is to bridge the gap between system-level requirements, often expressed in natural, constrained or semi-formal languages and formal models, that can be simulated and verified.
