This thesis deals with development of a graphical editor of simulation models. Design of the editor is based on a research which was carried out among professional simulation systems with graphical user interface. The new graphical editor is based on DEVS formalism since it is quite hard to implement a reliable simulation tool. This formalism was verified in great number of its implementation. One of them is Adevs library which is used in editor. Plugins can be used to provide additional features (i.e. another simulator) without need for changing the code of the editor. Another way to extend editor functionality are user scripts. The thesis presents the software development process of the editor in detail. Furthermore, a brief summary of DEVS formalism along with some DEVS modifications and extensions is included. In the end, a set of tests which were used for editor testing on multiple platforms is added.

Modeling and simulation provides a powerful technology for engineers and managers to understand, design, and evaluate a system under development. Traditionally, simulation is only used in early stages of a system design. However, with the advances of hardware and software technology, it is now possible to extend simulation to late stages for supporting a full life cycle simulation-based development. Robot-in-the-loop simulation, where real robots work together with virtual ones, has been developed to support such a development process to bridge the gap between simulation and reality.

The multiplication of software environments supporting DEVS Modeling & Simulation is becoming a hindrance to scientific collaboration. Indeed, the use of disparate tools in the community makes the exchange, reuse and comparison of models very difficult, preventing practitioners from building on previous works to devise models of ever-increasing complexity. Tool interoperability is not the only issue raised by the need for models of higher and higher complexity. As models grow, their development becomes more error-prone, and their simulation becomes more resource-consuming. Consequently, it is necessary to devise techniques for improving simulators performance and for providing thorough model verification to assist the practitioner during model design. In this thesis, we propose two innovative approaches for DEVS Modeling & Simulation that tackle the aforementioned issues. The first contribution described in this document is a model-driven environment for modeling systems with the DEVS formalism, named SimStudio. This environment relies on Model-Driven Engineering to provide a high-level framework where practitioners can create, edit and visualize models, and automatically generate multiple artifacts, most notably model specifications compatible with various DEVS simulators. The core of SimStudio is a platform-independent metamodel of the DEVS formalism, which provides a pivot format for DEVS models. Based on this metamodel, we developed several model verification features as well as many model transformations that can be used to automatically generate documentation, diagrams or code targeting various DEVS platforms. Thus, SimStudio gives a proof of concept of the integration capabilities that a DEVS standard would provide; as a matter of fact, the metamodel presented in this thesis could possibly serve as a basis for such a standard. The second contribution of this thesis is DEVS-MetaSimulator (DEVS-MS), a DEVS library relying on metaprogramming to generate simulation executables that are specialized and optimized for the model they handle. To do so, the library performs many computations during compilation, resulting in a simulation code where most overhead have been eliminated. The tests we conducted showed that the generated programs were very efficient, but the performance gain is not the only feature of DEVS-MS. Indeed, through metaprogramming, DEVS-MS can also assert the correctness of models by verifying model characteristics at compile-time, detecting and reporting modeling errors very early in the development cycle and with better confidence than what could be achieved with classical testing.

Conventional method of development which repeats phases of design, implementation and testing is not adequate for systems like intelligent agents for which complex behavior is required but specification is unclear at the beginning of development process. Incremental design of agent's model during simulation seems more suitable for it enables direct feedback in behavioral changes of a system. This interactivity speeds up development process and helps to uncover parts of a space of all models to designer - thanks to new knowledge acquired during simulation. This thesis aims to provide comparison of suitability of two agent architectures and respective platforms in context of SmallDEVS modeling and simulation framework for this methodology of development. First approach is reactive and decentralized subsumption architecture based on DEVS formalism and the second one is PNagent, framework realizing deliberative BDI architecture using Object Oriented Petri Nets.

This MSc Thesis describes creation of motion model of mobile robot called Trilobot. This model is implemented into simple simulation tool. Some laboratory experiments with the robot are described in this paper. There is also some information about SmallDEVS tool and Squeak Smalltalk environment in which the model was implemented. Motivation of this work is effort to simplify the design and testing of navigation algorithms for Trilobot, which is available for students of FIT BUT in the robotics lab of department of intelligent systems. This simple simulation tool could partially reduce dependence on physical availability of this robot.

Les travaux de cette thèse portent sur :<br />− la proposition d'algorithmes de simulation distribuée conservative de modèles DEVS / G-DEVS,<br />− la définition et la réalisation d'un environnement de modélisation & simulation (M&S) G-DEVS com-patible HLA implémentant les algorithmes proposés,<br />− l'application de l'environnement à la M&S de Workflow.<br />Dans un premier temps, nous avons introduit un composant coordinateur racine G-DEVS distribué, incluant un algorithme de communication avec le RTI HLA basé sur le mécanisme de synchronisation conservative et utilisant un Lookahead positif. Nous avons ensuite proposé deux algorithmes originaux pour le calcul d'un Loo-kahead relatif à l'état courant d'un modèle G-DEVS. Ces algorithmes, basés sur l'analyse du domaine de varia-tion de la fonction « durée de vie » du modèle, augmentent les performances de la simulation distribuée comme l'illustrent les expériences menées.<br />Basé sur ces approches, nous avons développé un environnement de M&S distribué G-DEVS / HLA. Cet environnement a été intégré à une application de Workflow. Les possibilités offertes par l'environnement ont été illustrées par l'étude de cas réels d'entreprises.

Ce rapport présente les différentes étapes suivies afin de définir une nouvelle approche de modélisation et de simulation à évènements discrets pour les systèmes à paramètres imprécis. Cette étude a débuté avec des travaux sur la formalisation d'un système de production de fromage Corse. Suite à ces recherches, et en particulier, suite à la phase de modélisation du processus, nous avons pu constater l'influence de paramètres imparfaitement définis. Ces paramètres entrent en compte au cours des différentes phases de conception, et sont difficiles à représenter et surtout à manipuler. Dans le but de les prendre en compte de manière générique, nous nous sommes naturellement tournés vers l'utilisation de la Logique Floue. En effet, elle permet de représenter des informations imprécises (théorie des sous ensembles flous), incertaines (théorie des possibilités), et inexacte (raisonnement approximatif). Son avantage principal est de fournir un grand nombre d'outils mathématiques afin de manipuler de telles informations sous forme numérique ou linguistique, c'est-à-dire de manière relativement proche du mode de représentation, et surtout d'expression utilisé par l'homme. A partir des théories du flou, nous pouvons donc user de concepts mathématiques complexes tout en conservant un rapport privilégié (lien) entre représentation numérique et mode de description humain. Nous avons choisi d'intégrer ces différents outils dans un multi formalisme de modélisation et de simulation afin de pouvoir spécifier de manière générique n'importe quel type de système à paramètres imprécis. Le formalisme employé est nommé DEVS (Discrete EVents system Specification). Ses principaux avantages sont : sa capacité à être étendu à de nouveaux domaines d'étude, dans notre cas les systèmes flous ; la séparation des phases de modélisation et de simulation, de ce fait, lors de la conception d'un modèle DEVS les algorithmes de simulation sont automatiquement générés en fonction du modèle ; enfin, il permet de représenter un système sous sa forme fonctionnelle et structurelle. Notre but est d'associer le formalisme DEVS et une partie des théories du flou afin de définir une nouvelle approche de modélisation approximative.

This thesis deals with the topic of  model-based design and application of simulation in system design. In the introduction, the thesis discusses the history of software development process and outlines the current status. The aim is to demonstrate a model-driven design on a case study of conference system. There will be presented formalisms of DEVS and OOPN  together with experimental tools PNtalk and SmallDEVS that allow to work with these formalisms. The resulting model of conference system will be deployed as part of a web application using a framework Seaside in the Squeak environment.