Our timeline

  • 2011-2012 — initial language development and feasibility assessment of a time-predictable execution engine through a prototype implementation
  • Since 2012 — CPAL is used in embedded system courses at the University of Luxembourg as a language to learn the principles of model-based design (MBD) and practice it by developing case-studies such as a capsule coffee machine, a simplified programmable floor robot and an elevator control system, etc
  • 2014 — CPAL is integrated in the network simulator RTaW-Pegase as a language to describe the application’s functional behaviour and new protocol layers. Development of the SOME/IP SD automotive protocol on top of Ethernet in CPAL which has been used in a study published at Date’2015
  • 2015 — CPAL is being used in two applications: the development of a remote termination component for UAVs and for solving the Thales FTMV challenge (paper, slides)
  • Since 2016 — ongoing work to support IoT applications through gsm and IoT network connectivity. CPAL has been used for the design of a smart mobility system for two and three-wheelers implemented on an ARM mbed IoT board, with IBM Watson IoT platform as cloud backend (paper).
  • Since 2016 — CPAL is used by ONERA to simulate and prototype a code-upload protocol for the avionics domain. CPAL is used by CNES and RTaW to assess the clock synchronization accuracy in TTEthernet and study with model-based fault-injection its robustness to permanent and transient failures (paper).

Meet the team

Sebastian AltmeyerTiming Verification
Sebastian is a researcher in the field of timing verification for real-time systems on a post-doctoral position at the University of Amsterdam (Veni grant). His work in schedulability analysis and program interpretation contributes to a better understanding and control of the timing behavior of shared hardware resources such as memory caches or communication buses.
Loïc FejozLanguage Design and Development Environment
Loïc’s backround is in formal methods and model-driven engineering. He is a research engineer at RTaW and the driving force behind the design of the CPAL language and the development of the CPAL-Editor.

Lionel HavetParser and Runtime Execution Engine
Lionel is a research engineer at RTaW with a wide range of industrial experience in control systems and embedded software for critical systems. He previously worked at Sagem, Giat Industries, Philips, lead during 3 years the development of an automatic gearbox software at General Motors and developed control laws for vehicles platoons at Inria. He is responsible for the development of the CPAL parser and execution engine.
Sakthivel Manikandan SundharamTiming-Predictable Model-Based Design
Sakthivel Manikandan started a Phd at the University of Luxembourg in November 2015. He works on how to achieve a timing-equivalent execution between simulated models and the code that is executed on an embedded target. He has also developed IoT devices built around CPAL and connected to cloud infrastructures.
Nicolas NavetCSO
Nicolas is a Professor in Computer Science at the University of Luxembourg. He started RTaW in 2007 and was its CTO during 5 years. His goal is to contribute to the techniques, tools and computing platforms that will make it possible to build provably safe embedded systems in a time and cost efficient manner.
Julien RischeTesting and port to new platforms
Julien is participating to the development of the CPAL parser and interpreter, unit tests and port to new embedded platforms. He is a software engineering apprentice at RTaW.