D. Reilly and A. Taleb-BEndiab, Journal_Paper_v1_27 Page 1 11/20/00 A Model-Based Approach for the Design and Development of In-Vehicle Telematics Systems

The use of computing and mobile communications technologies in road vehicles has attracted the interest of hardware and software vendors [IBM & Motorola], [Sun Microsystems] as well as system solution providers. These “so-called ” In-Vehicle Telematics Systems have the potential to open up new market segments [NEWSBYTES] and will result in systems that: improve the quality of life for the consumer, assist the Police, Fire and Health-care emergency services and generally make road travel safer and more pleasurable. In-vehicle telematics systems tend to be ‘component-based ’ systems and consist of a collection of ‘off-the-shelf ’ components, which are inter-connected and configured to fulfil the system’s requirements. The modelling, design and implementation of these systems draws upon expertise from several different disciplines, such as: computing, telecommunications, electronics, mechatronics and human factors. With these attributes in mind, the development of IVTS calls for an approach, which combines formalized system’s modelling together with techniques to visualize different physical design configurations so that they may be compared and contrasted. In this paper, we describe an approach, which is based on combining the semi-formal Unified Modelling Language (UML) together with a graphics-based IDE, which was developed from the FRETSET project [FRETSET] and facilitates the physical layout and design configuration of in-vehicle telematics systems. The approach is demonstrated using an industrial case-study involving the development of a system for a fleet haulage company. 1