An Ontological Framework for Autonomous Systems Modelling

Conceptual modelling aims at identifying, and characterising the entities and the relationships of a selected phenomenon in some domain. The obtained conceptual models express the meaning of the concepts used by domain experts, and the relationships between them. An ontology is a for- mal specification of a common conceptualisation shared by stakeholders and experts in a domain. Ontologies can serve as the semantic support for conceptual modelling, guiding and constraining the intended meaning of the conceptual models. We have followed this approach in our model-based control systems, by developing a domain ontology and an ontology- based methodology to support the conceptual modelling of autonomous systems. The ontology for autonomous systems captures the ontological elements to describe an autonomous system's structure, function, and behaviour. The methodology exploits the ontology to generate the conceptual models for a generic engineering process. Both elements have been used in case studies to obtain conclusions on the suitability of the developed ontology and its application in the model-based engineering of autonomous systems.