Synthesis Based Engineering: from manual programming to model-driven control

How do we design control systems that are reliable, safe and ready for the future? This question was at the heart of what Bas de Roos explored at KienIA. In collaboration with TNO-ESI, Bas explored how Synthesis Based Engineering (SBE) can help make the shift from manual programming to model-driven design.

In industrial automation, systems are becoming increasingly complex. Designers need to manage more dependencies, higher requirements for safety and reliability, and shorter development times. SBE offers a promising approach: based on a formal model of the system and its requirements, a controller can be generated automatically and shown to meet those requirements.

From model to insight

In this first application of SBE at KienIA, Bas worked with the Eclipse Supervisory Control Engineering Toolkit (Eclipse ESCET™), an open-source toolkit developed under the leadership of, among others, TU/e and TNO. Using the ESCET toolkit, Bas modelled control challenges and tested scenarios in a simulation environment. This makes it possible to see early on how a system responds to changing conditions, such as peak demand in a heat network or the operation of a bridge.

The strength of this approach lies not only in automation, but also in precision. Requirements must be made explicit: what exactly should happen, under which conditions, and what must never occur? This helps reveal ambiguities earlier and creates a shared understanding between designers, asset managers, operators and clients.

Following the successful first project of Bas, KienIA has recently become a member of the growing Eclipse ESCET community.

Curious to learn more? Feel free to connect with Dennis Hendriks, Senior Scientist, TNO-ESI.