Domain-Specific Feature Modeling for High Integrity Vehicle Control System Functional Design

Vehicle control system development is a complex process, involving multiple stages and multiple groups in different disciplines. Constructing a high-integrity configuration for a product with a large number of control functions is very challenging in current practice because of lacking effective modeling methods to capture and maintain the individually-developed functions and their relations in the configurations for a large variety of products. In this paper, we present a solution that tackles such design challenge using the combination of feature modeling and domain-specific modeling. The solution adopts multi-level metamodeling with extensions and specializations to capture the domain-specific needs. The functional design of a vehicle product is done through a step-wise configuration and can be reasoned about using the logic formulas representing the configuration. Domain-specific analysis for high-integrity vehicle control design, such as identifying "enabled" features, also becomes possible. Our preliminary evaluation based on applying the solution to a subset of the body control functional design has shown its effectiveness and applicability in a role-based, product line vehicle control development process.