Visual integration of UML 2.0 and block diagrams for flexible reconfiguration in mechatronic UML

Today, complex, networked, self-adaptive mechatronic systems which integrate advanced control engineering and software engineering concepts within a single software system are envisioned. These systems adapt their structures at runtime to react to detected environmental changes, to change their system goals, or to react to a change of the system structure. To enable the development of such systems, an integration of object-oriented modeling techniques such as UML and control theory approaches such as functional block modeling is required. Thereby, the successful visual modeling concepts of control engineering should be preserved, as otherwise wide acceptance in industry, which is mainly dominated by control engineers, is very unlikely. In this paper, we present such a visual integration for UML 2.0 components, statecharts, and block diagrams developed within the MECHATRONlC UML approach. It permits to graphically model reconfiguration between several pre-defined configurations with statecharts and instance diagrams as well as to specify the flexible assembly of control configuration if needed by means of visual reconfiguration rules.