Operating Cyber-Physical Systems with Microservices: The s*IoT Conceptual Modelling Approach

Putting conceptual models into operation traditionally relies on capabilities of humans. The digitalization of just about everything challenges the dependence on humans as the operationalization of conceptual models by cyber-physical systems (CPSs) is becoming a potential alternative. To enable this transition, this study focuses on the conceptualization of a description framework that revolves around the co-construction of functional capabilities by design-time and run-time aspects of conceptual models and CPSs. Thereby, the shift of CPS architectures towards service oriented architectures leads to new requirements for modelling formalisms. Consequently, the description framework provides means to operate and semantically describe functional capabilities of CPSs that are deployed as microservices. To validate the approach, a case study is conducted in which a modelling method is constructed that realizes a mock-up implementation of the description framework. Furthermore, the modelling method is applied as a modelling tool to build "smart" models that employ CPSs for operationalization.