Modeling and implementation of large and complex software systems
In numerous industries such as automotive or fintech, businesses are challenged by the intricate development of sophisticated technical and socio-technical systems, demanding a meticulous approach to ensure rapid market adoption and enduring viability. The evolution towards autonomous, interactive, and dynamically networked products, propelled by software innovation, underscores the need for innovative, rigorous methodologies within the domain of Software & Systems Engineering.
Today’s software-intensive systems and services are characterized by:
The engineering of software-intensive systems needs to cope with this complexity, which calls for novel approaches to support continuous, seamless development, and quality assurance across multidisciplinary boundaries between organizations, teams, platforms, and systems.
The development of such approaches falls within the scope of the Software & Systems Engineering (SSE) research focus area at fortiss. We investigate and evaluate models, methodologies, and tools for the continuous engineering and systematic evolution of software-intensive systems and services. To this end, we conduct applied and evidence-based research with relevant industries to solve next-generation problems in software and systems engineering.
Efficiently deal with volatile and heterogenous requirements
Our area of expertise focuses on developing practical approaches to efficiently handle multifunctional requirements. These occur particularly in early, volatile, user-centered, and highly regulated environments, as well as in data-based software development phases.
Methods and tools to tame the complexity of cyber-physical systems
We investigate novel methods based on semantically rich system models to reduce engineering costs and time-to-market for cyber-physical systems. With our open-source tools, we validate our approach for automating design decisions and validating architectures and model artifacts based on advanced techniques such as formal methods and simulation.
► Model-based Systems Engineering
Expertise for outstanding software quality
In the Center for Code Excellence we conduct research on new processes, methods, and tools for software developers to support them in their daily work and ensure high software quality and maintainability. To this end, we focus on AI methods to aid developers and provide automated assessments for organizations.
We develop methods and tools to ensure the safety of autonomous cyber-physical systems that use AI technologies to adapt to changing environments. The focus is on the verification and validation of these adaptive systems, combining formal methods and scenario-based tests to ensure reliability and safety in real-world applications such as the automotive and aviation industries.
Software Engineering for data-intensive applications
We focus on developing test automation tools and practices to make test engineering more applicable and effective, including traditional rule-based software, as well as sophisticated data-driven AI-based software, up to complex cyber-physical systems.
fortiss offers structured approaches for company partners to conduct self-assessments using lightweight, web-based tools that help them to analyze their problems and potentials in various Software & Systems Engineeringg disciplines. The fortiss Quick Checks are available for the areas of:
fortiss applies innovative approaches and methods to create open-source software for innovative solutions in numerous application areas:
► fortiss open-source software
fortiss conducts systematic evaluation and dissemination of research results in the form of demonstrators, open-source software, networking events, conferences, and industry trainings.
In practice, SMEs often lack the necessary expertise for individual software solutions, their effective implementation and maintenance. This leads to uncertainties and incorrect assumptions, which in turn represents a major obstacle to investment in digital value creation. In order to meet this challenge, an easily accessible offer is to be created to impart software engineering knowledge in SMEs.
AutoFOCUS 3 (AF3) is a proven research platform that implements the latest results from fortiss in the field of model-based development. AF3 is available as open source software, and the new version 2.24 offers numerous new functions that further enhance the platform's capabilities.
The research partner consortium has been commissioned to set up a nationwide digitalization transformation hub focusing on software and engineering. fortiss contributes its many years of expertise from the automotive industry to the project and represent software component development and testing through the Center for Code Excellence.
The whitepaper highlights the advantages of model-based systems engineering (MBSE) for complex cyber-physical systems, explains the challenges and also provides a compact introduction to MBSE.
The whitepaper examines the increased demands on the development of today's and future technical systems and discusses the characteristics of Advanced Systems Engineering (ASE) and Model-based Systems Engineering (MBSE).
The whitepaper explores how model-based methods can be utilized to facilitate the integration of safety and security by addressing the escalating threat of cyber-attacks targeting system vulnerabilities, which could lead to severe consequences including the remote disabling of safety mechanisms.