“Deterministic Executable Models for Dependable Autonomous Systems”

Dr René Hexel – Griffith University, Australia

The advent of increasingly powerful computing devices in the world of embedded systems has seen a rapid transition from traditional control systems to highly complex systems whose behaviour is guided by complex algorithms from the realm of artificial intelligence, such as machine learning and goal-driven task planning. Unfortunately, many of the benefits brought by such systems come at the expense of dependability, particularly when it comes to operating in safety-critical real-time environments. The presentation will discuss techniques that promise to integrate the best of both worlds, allowing to model highly complex systems in a way that allows failure-mode effects analysis (FMEA), formal verification, model checking, and fault handling.

René Hexel, PhD, MSc Deputy Head, School of Information and Communication Technology Griffith University Nathan   QLD 4111 Australia   IEEE Senior Member   Phone: +61 (7) 373 55041 EMail: r.hexel@griffith.edu.au

Dr René Hexel has been a leading researcher in software engineering of safety-critical real-time systems. His achievements include methodologies for modelling, model-checking, evaluation, and validation of safety-critical systems, including failure mode effects analysis (FMEA) through fault injection. Dr Hexel has influenced establishing underlying principles in real-time communication protocols now in widespread use, such as FlexRay and TTP (now an industry standard deployed in the Airbus A380 and the Boeing 787 Dreamliner). He has been a key contributor towards the specification of TTP, a time-triggered communication protocol for safety-critical, fault-tolerant real-time systems. His current research work focuses on the application of the above principles towards Software Engineering and Complex Distributed Systems with the ultimate goal to establish a more robust and reliable way of how safety critical systems are developed and deployed tomorrow.

Dr Hexel is Deputy Head of School of ICT at Griffith University. He is Co-Director of the Machine Intelligence and Pattern Analysis Lab (MiPal) under the umbrella of the Institute for Integrated and Intelligent Systems (IIIS), a Class-A University Research Institute. Dr Hexel is the Griffith University CI and local coordinator of the PANTHER project, a research collaboration and mobility project funded under the EU Erasmus Mundus program.