ETCetera: beyond Event-Triggered Control

TL;DR

ETCetera is a Python library that models and analyzes event-triggered control systems using automata, enabling performance evaluation, scheduler synthesis, and optimization for networked control systems.

Contribution

The paper introduces ETCetera, a novel Python tool that constructs automata-based abstractions of ETC systems for analysis and synthesis tasks.

Findings

Provides automata models for ETC systems

Enables analysis of sampling performance and communication scheduling

Supports optimization of sampling strategies

Abstract

We present ETCetera, a Python library developed for the analysis and synthesis of the sampling behaviour of event triggered control (ETC) systems. In particular, the tool constructs abstractions of the sampling behaviour of given ETC systems, in the form of timed automata (TA) or finite-state transition systems (FSTSs). When the abstraction is an FSTS, ETCetera provides diverse manipulation tools for analysis of ETC's sampling performance, synthesis of communication traffic schedulers (when networks shared by multiple ETC loops are considered), and optimization of sampling strategies. Additionally, the TA models may be exported to UPPAAL for analysis and synthesis of schedulers. Several examples of the tool's application for analysis and synthesis problems with different types of dynamics and event-triggered implementations are provided.