Modern cyber-physical systems (CPS) such as cars, airplanes, or smart home systems integrate computational processes with physical processes. These CPS comprise of many electronic, mechanical, and software-controlled components, posing difficult challenges for the design of such complex systems. Not only is there a need for modern CPS to be highly dependable, configurable, and flexible. At the same time, these systems can only function if all parts interact seamlessly. As a result, individual developers find it increasingly difficult to control the complexity of modern CPS, even at an abstract architectural level. For this reason, so-called “views” of the system – sub-models that are specific to the developer’s task – are used during development. 

Since there exist manifold dependencies between these views, there is urgent need for novel consistency-maintaining methods in Advanced Systems Engineering. To meet these demands, the Collaborative Research Center “Consistency in the View-Based Development of Cyber-Physical Systems” (Convide) brings together researchers with a background in computer science, mechanical engineering, and electrical engineering from Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Technical University Munich, Technical University Dresden, and the University of Mannheim. Together, they are developing methods that aim to shorten development cycles and update intervals as well as to improve the adaptability, reliability, and security of modern CPS.