AGenC

Project Goals:

The AGenC project aims to shorten development cycles in the design of cyber-physical systems (CPS) and make their operation safer as well as more effective.

CPS are becoming increasingly important: Almost all application fields of information technology from mobility, logistics and mechanical engineering to energy technology are dominated by cyber-physical systems, for example measuring devices, sorting machines or robots. CPS are networked computer systems (,,cyber") that interact directly with the environment (,,physical") via sensors and actuators according to the principle of logic, computation, output.

The goal of the AGenC project is to develop a toolbox for CPS from different application areas with uniformly usable methods and interoperable technology solutions for their modeling. AGenC stands for Automatic Generation of Models for prediction, testing and monitoring of cyber-physical systems.

Objectives:

Model generation for CPS has been automated insufficiently. It is extremely time-consuming to check complex CPS during design and operation (testing), to monitor them during operation (monitoring) or to predict the system behavior (prediction). This is where AGenC comes in: Together with project partners, the CML is developing a software framework with uniformly usable and domain-independent methods to be able to model CPS in a data-driven and automated manner.

The software framework AGenC aims to simplify the modelling approach and to realise the automated modelling of CPS. For this purpose, it combines different and partly novel AI methods to explore the behavior of the CPS in different situations from (measured) data. With the help of the models generated in this way, AGenC generates test cases, predictes system behavior and monitors the system in operation. A practical test of the software framework to be developed will take place using CPS from different domains: intralogistics, port technology and energy technology.

Role of the CML in AGenC:

The CML brings to the project its experience with complex cyber-physical port technology systems. Within AGenC, we are modeling a CPS for twistlock handling for containers. This involves a novel technical solution of the company KALP GmbH for the automatic insertion and removal of twistlocks during waterside container handling.

Furthermore, the CML participates in the development of the automated test case generator based on the AGenC framework. This shall result in optimizing the energy system of the CPS in question and thus contributing to the reduction of emissions during container handling.

Project consortium:

Institute of Technical Logistics at TUHH (coordinator), Institute of Embedded Systems at TUHH, OFFIS e.V., VIVAVIS AG, KALP GmbH, SICK AG, and Fraunhofer Center for Maritime Logistics and Services CML.

The project is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research and will run from October 2022 to September 2025.