Krzysztof Czarnecki
PhD. Professor
Krzysztof Czarnecki is a Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Waterloo. Before coming to Waterloo, he was a researcher at DaimlerChrysler Research (1995-2002), Germany, focusing on improving software development practices and technologies in enterprise, automotive, and aerospace sectors. While at Waterloo, he held the NSERC/Bank of Nova Scotia Industrial Research Chair in Requirements Engineering of Service-oriented Software Systems (2008-2013) and has worked on methods and tools for engineering complex software-intensive systems. He received the Premier's Research Excellence Award in 2004 and the British Computing Society in Upper Canada Award for Outstanding Contributions to IT Industry in 2008. He has also received seven Best Paper Awards, two ACM Distinguished Paper Awards, and one Most Influential Paper Award. His current research focuses on autonomous driving and the safety of systems that rely on artificial intelligence. He serves on Society of Automotive Engineers task forces on level of driving automation, reference architecture for automated driving systems, and maneuvers and behaviors. As part of this research, he co-leads the development of UW Moose, Canada’s first self-driving research vehicle (autonomoose.net).
Title and Abstract of the Talk:
Requirements Engineering in the Age of Societal-Scale Cyber-Physical Systems: The Case of Automated Driving
Societal-scale cyber-physical systems (S-CPS) are computer systems controlling physical entities using sensors and actuators, with intelligence provided by software and data, and deployed at a large scale. Over the next few decades, these systems are poised to transform entire sectors of our life, including energy, healthcare, and transportation. Automated vehicles are a prime example of such systems: they are computers on wheels that run on data while communicating with smart infrastructure and each other.
Requirements engineering (RE) has a key role to play in this transformation and in achieving the positive effects S-CPS. I will argue that RE for S-CPS should be data-driven, continuous, and values-based. While these directions have already been identified in the RE field, this talk will exemplify their role for automated driving and point to open questions and future research opportunities. An important theme throughout this talk will be safety assurance, which is an immediate major challenge for engineering of these systems, and RE has also a key role to play in addressing it.