LieberLieber was invited to present their approach to executable models as part of the Executable Modeling workshop that was held at the 2018 MODELS conference in Copenhagen (October 14-19, 2018). MODELS is the vibrant flagship venue for academics investigating foundations and applications of model-driven engineering, including modeling tools.

In advance, LieberLieber has solved a tool challenge issued by the Model-Driven Engineering Tools workshop of MODELS conference using Enterprise Architect and Embedded Engineer. The challenge was to remotely control a rover in a simulation environment so that it follows a leading rover at a certain distance – all by using models.

The solution was presented by our partners of the Christian Doppler Laboratory for Model-Integrated Smart Production at TU Wien. It comprised three main models that were used to generate C code that could be compiled using Visual Studio:

  • An Embedded Engineer diagram for the overall composition of entities (main, rover control, communication library, external libraries).
  • An activity diagram for specifying the algorithm for keeping the rover oriented towards the leader.
  • A state machine diagram for keeping the rover at the right distance.

The audience, mostly computer scientists, but also representatives from tool vendors could experience the linking of the behavioral models to Visual Studio that has been implemented in Embedded Engineer. It is possible to run the generated code, step through it in debug mode, and set/unset break points from within the modeling perspective. At the same time, a visual marker depicts in the diagrams, which behavioral part is currently executed. This makes it easy to experience the sequence of actions already in the model, in a visual way. In addition, the corresponding generated program code is displayed and highlighted.