Abstract
Systems development has often resulted as a hit-or-miss proposition before the advent of standardized analysis and design languages providing blueprints understood by both software and systems engineers. This paved the way for modeling cyber-physical systems using established, yet evolving standardized notation widely accepted by industry. In the past, system analysts would try to assess the needs of their clients, generate a requirements analysis in some notation that the analyst understood (but not always the client), give that analysis to a programmer or team of programmers, and hope that the final product was the system the client wanted (Schmuller, 2003). However, advances in UML and SysML have created new pathways to the design process when combined with Concurrent Object Modeling and Architectural Design Method (COMET) methodology that can assist in the realm of complex embedded system design for next generation cyber-physical systems (Rajhans, 2009). In order for product development to meet a desired need, communicating the vision to the developers is of utmost importance. The UML is a visual modeling language that enables system builders to create blueprints that capture their design intentions in a standardized format for effective communication of engineering detail. The paper reviews some key benefits of using UML and SysML during the product development process with COMET. The UML process steps are briefly described, followed by an introduction to the SysML language which is an extension of the UML. The paper provides a process review of embedded system development using SysML for systems engineering that can be useful for modeling aspects of cyber-physical system development during integrated product development. Realizing the fact that SysML may be considered too generic to address embedded and real-time system design, the paper provides a brief review of COMET, a UML based method for the development of concurrent applications, in particular distributed and real-time applications (Gomaa, 2008). The Artificial Intelligence Design Framework introduced as part of the thesis work supported by NASA (Tanik, 2006) can be adapted to cyber-physical system design. The published book detailing the AIDF called Architecting Automated Design Systems is based on this thesis work (Tanik, 2008) and is being used as a basis for supporting cyber-physical system design using artificial intelligence decision support with many application areas, including complex safety-critical medical and space systems design. This journal paper establishes the link between the conference paper on integrated product development (Tanik, 2010), and the previous work on the PhD thesis completed in 2006 that relates to cyber-physical system design frameworks.