Role Framework to Support Collaborative Virtual Prototyping of System of Systems

The concept of System of Systems (SoS) has become a key to handle the complexity of large scale systems designed in domains such as aerospace or defense. Virtual prototyping, by providing modelling and execution, increases the success of the SoS. Large scale systems involve heterogeneous modelling and execution formalism. Typical approaches based on types fail in offering the needed dynamicity to answer the virtual prototyping requirements. In order to bridge the existing gap between system models and execution tools, we suggest an approach based on roles and parser combinatory. Roles provide a dynamic coupling between modelling and execution allowing independent evolution of modelling and execution. Parser combinatory ease the integration of new modelling formalisms. This approach has been validated on a seafloor observatory project and lead to the implementation of a framework in Smalltalk.