DevOps for Complex Cyber-physical Systems

Much of the increasing complexity of ICT systems is being driven by the more distributed and heterogeneous nature of these systems, with Cyber Physical Systems accounting for an increasing portion of Software Ecosystems.

This basic premise underpins the COSMOS proposal which focuses on blending best practices DevOps solutions with the development processes used in the CPS context: this will enable the CPS world to deliver software more rapidly and result in more secure and trustworthy systems.COSMOS brings together a balanced consortium of big industry, SMEs and academics which will develop enhanced DevOps pipelines which target development of CPS software.

These pipelines will integrate more sophisticated validation and verification (V&V) which will comprise of a mix of static code analysis correlated with issues and bug reports, automated test case generation, runtime verification, Hardware in the Loop (HiL) testing and feedback from field devices. Approaches based on Machine Learning, model based testing and search based test generation will be employed.

Techniques to prioritize and schedule testing to maximize efficacy of the testing process and to minimize security threats will also be developed.

COSMOS will leverage existing prototype technologies developed by the partners supporting enhancing them throughout the project.The COSMOS CPS pipelines will be validated against 5 use cases provided by industrial partners representing healthcare, avionics, automotive, utility and railway sectors.

These will act as reference use cases when promoting the technology amongst Open Source and standardization communities.

For the former a specific community building activity will be performed to stimulate engagement with Open Source; for the latter, the standards experience of the coordinator and partners will be employed to promote COSMOS technologies within heavily regulated sectors where there is an increasing need for well-defined software V&V solutions.