An ongoing effort within the community of verification and program analysis is to raise the level of abstraction in programming by automatic synthesis. In this paper, we demonstrate how our synthesis engine GAVS+ achieves this goal by automatically creating control code for the FESTO Modular Production System. The overall approach is model-driven: we reinterpret planning domain definition language (PDDL) as a design contract to model two-player games played between control and environment, such that users can describe (i) basic abilities of hardware components, including sensors (as environment moves) and actuators (as control moves), (ii) topologies how components are interconnected, and (iii) desired specification under a restricted class of linear temporal logic. The model is processed by our game-based synthesis engine, from which intermediate code is generated. By mapping each behavioral-level action to a sequence of low-level PLC control commands, we transform the intermediate code into an executable program. The efficiency of our engine enables to synthesize every scenario presented in this paper within seconds. When the specification evolves, this implies a huge time-gain compared to manual program modification.

In the past, model-based development focused mainly on functional and structural aspects of the system to be developed. Recently, several approaches to include timing aspects have been suggested. However, these approaches are typically applied in later development phases. Models specifying the requirements with respect to timing without focusing on a specific solution are missing. For example, few models support the specification of the allowed jitter of a system. In this paper, we identify requirements on languages for modeling the desired timing behavior of hard and soft real-time systems by analyzing different application domains. Based on these results, we evaluate existing approaches with respect to their suitability and present a suitable approach. Finally, this paper describes the application of the suggested approach in the context of an example from the automation domain.