Modeling reactive systems in Java

We present an application of the Java/sup TM/ programming language to specify and implement reactive real-time systems. We have developed and tested a collection of classes and methods to describe concurrent modules and their asynchronous communication by means of signals. The control structures are closely patterned after those of the synchronous language Esterel, succinctly describing concurrency, sequencing and preemption. We show the user-friendliness and efficiency of the proposed technique by using an example from the automotive domain.