Industrial IoT (IIoT) architectures are typically distributed and asynchronous with event-driven communication, e.g. based on the publication (and corresponding subscription) of messages. These asynchronous architectures enhance scalability and tolerance to changes, but raise interoperability issues as the explicit knowledge of the internal structure of the messages and their categorization (topics) is diluted. And this is just one of the challenges IIoT systems face. The heterogeneity of devices at the edge and fog layers and the unexpected changes in the dynamic environment impact their quality of service (QoS). In this talk we will review these challenges and explore how model-based techniques can help to create better IIoT systems faster. Indeed, modeling can help in all phases of the IIoT life-cycle. At design time, by facilitating the definition of the message format. At development time by semi-automatically generating client code to read and write correct message payloads. At runtime by monitoring and executing self-adaptation rules that optimize its QoS.
Jordi Cabot is an ICREA Research Professor at Internet Interdisciplinary Institute, the Research center of the Open University of Catalonia (UOC) where he is leading the SOM Research Lab. Previously, he has been at École des Mines de Nantes, Inria, University of Toronto, Politecnico di Milano and the Technical University of Catalonia. His research falls into the broad area of systems and software engineering, especially promoting the rigorous use of models in all types of engineering tasks and complex domains. Current research topics include pragmatic formal verification techniques, analysis of developer communities, modeling for CPS/IoT systems and the role AI can play in software development (and vice versa).