SFB 501

Application Domain

As an application domain to demonstrate and validate its research results, the SFB has chosen to initially focus on distributed control and monitoring systems, and, in particular, on home automation systems. Home automation systems are computer-based systems controlling aspects like room temperature, ventilation, lighting, and access control for buildings ranging from smaller family residences to large office buildings and industrial buildings. For several reasons, this application domain appears to be especially well-suited as a test-bed for the developed methods, techniques, and tools:

• Control and monitoring systems are reactive systems that have to meet a number of special requirements, for example, concerning their timing behavior and their reliability. Methods supporting the explicit consideration of nonfunctional properties during system development are therefore especially important in this domain.
• Control and monitoring systems in the domain of home automation systems show a high degree of variability in system designs and implementations, and are thus perfect candidates for generic system designs.
• There is a growing market for computer-based control and monitoring systems. Advances in the technology to develop such systems thus play an important role for the competitiveness of companies in that market.

It must be noted, however, that it is not the goal to develop outstanding new products in this application domain. Selected systems from this domain rather serve as prototypes for demonstrating the benefits of the technologies developed by the SFB. The transferability of these technologies will be proven by a gradual extension of the case studies to other application domains.

 
2000-05-08