In: Proceedings of the second IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man and Cybernetics (SMC'02), October 6-9, 2002, Hammamet, Tunisia, Volume 5. IEEE Computer Society Press, October 2002.
Abstract: A recent trend in the automotive industry is the introduction of 'x-by-wire' technologies, for example steer- and brake-by-wire, in order to replace purely mechanical systems with electro-mechanical ones. Clearly, such systems have to operate safely under any circumstances in order to not endanger the passengers and the environment of x-by-wire equipped vehicles. To be able to measure qualitative aspects of x-by-wire systems at the abstract level of architecture, this article introduces a class of timed Petri-Nets which allows for the modeling and simulation of such systems. With the help of a brake-by-wire example, it is shown how aspects like robustness and fault-tolerance can be measured.