2018-01-31 ERTS 2018 - Joseph Sifakis

The Internet of Things (IoT) is the ultimate vision for ICT. We now have the ability to measure, sense and see the exact condition of practically everything. People, systems and objects can communicate and interact with each other in entirely new ways. We are moving slowly but inevitably toward a unification of networking infrastructures, including telecommunication networks, the internet, industrial and home networks. Finally, we should be able to respond to changes quickly and accurately, by predicting events and optimizing resources.

To what extent this ambitious IoT vision of “universal global neural network” is reachable today? There exist two important roadblocks to this evolution. One is the lack of security guarantees. The internet infrastructure and systems in general, are vulnerable. They have been built in an ad hoc manner and it is impossible to provably enhance their security. The other roadblock is the lack of guarantees for response time and latency in the internet. This is a major impediment to the development of automated services. 

Additionally, the IoT vision advocates the extensive deployment of autonomous systems and services which are often critical. These challenge our ability to guarantee their trustworthiness: 1) they rely on learning techniques that cannot be formally validated; 2) they are open and their software needs to be frequently updated; 3) they should tightly integrate critical and non-critical features.

Embedded systems play a central role in the IoT vision. They are essential components of the Internet of Things and as such, their evolution should adequately address the changing needs in the area.

ERTS 2018 as the unique European cross-sector event on Embedded Software and Systems gathering together researchers, engineers and professionals, is an excellent forum for addressing all these issues and exchanging on future challenges and opportunities.

 Joseph Sifakis, Turing Award 2007, Verimag Laboratory - France

& Congress General - Co Chair and Technical
Programme Committee Chair

 2018-01-31 ERTS 2018 - Alexandre Corjon

Embedded systems are becoming more and more important in our day to day life, most of the devices that we are using contain « Electronics » and « Software » and are pushing us towards Industry 4.0 and digitalization. All major industry changes have been fueled by major technology steps and this one can be considered as the one of the software.

Expressed as such, we are focusing on technology only but there is also a major transformation from User perspective. User Experience is the new most important point in the development of new products and this focus is at the origin or the consequence of a services-oriented industry.

In the Automotive domain, we are facing these exact same new challenges with our developments for Electrical, Autonomous and Connected Vehicles, with increasing risks on Safety and Security. Software is becoming the first value of our vehicles and also the main asset we need to create and maintain. This will support introducing different User interactions with our products and work on the loyalty to our brands. Continuous relationship and evolutions are key to achieve our goals.

All these new features require interactions between on-board and off-board resources and their development will need to rely on robust System Engineering methods.

ERTS is now a very well-known convention, with people coming from almost all parts of the world with representatives from Academia to Industry teams. It is a real opportunity to exchange across domains, to share best practices, to discover roadblocks and items in research phase, to present difficulties and solutions.

The more the attendance, the better the exchanges!

 Alexandre Corjon, Alliance (Renault-Nissan) Global Vice President, Electrics, Electronics and Systems - France

& Congress General - Co Chair