18-649 Project 9

Advanced Elevator and Smart Dispatcher Design

Check the course webpage for due dates

Please submit all project-related correspondence to staff email address

Changelog:

Dated entries will appear here if the assignment changes after it is released.

A Recommendation About Design Verification

Runtime monitoring was introduces in Project 7. In Project 11, you will use runtime monitoring to verify that your design meets the new high-level requirements. Although you are not required to do so, you should look ahead at the monitoring requirements and think about how you can use monitoring to verify your improved design. We strongly recommend that you start using a monitor for verification as soon as you have a complete design. Dispatcher algorithms are very complex and have many corner cases. You probably won't find all the problems without runtime monitoring. You should also consider generating additional acceptance tests to further exercise your design. Again, these are not requirements, but remember that the sooner you identify problems in your design, the easier they are to fix!

Assignment

Now that you've finished the sequence diagrams and requirements for your elevator control system, you'll make the design changes through the rest of your design documents.

Update statecharts - You will update your statecharts based on the changes and additions made to your requirements in Project 8. Your statecharts must continue to be pure time-triggered design. You should refresh your memory by rereading the time-triggered design guidelines in Project 4.
Update unit tests - You will update your unit tests so that they correspond to the changes made in your statecharts.

Your tests must be syntactically valid (must execute without causing any runtime exceptions in the simulator), but you are not required to pass unit tests this week (OK to have failed assertions). You will be required to pass them next week, so don't blow off the creation of unit tests.
Your Unit Test Log must be complete and up-to-date, including describing the issues related to any controllers that are not passing all their unit tests.
Make sure your Unit Test Summary File is up-to-date, as this will be used to automate the grading of your portfolio.

Update implementation (code) - You will revise your controllers to implement the new statecharts that you have created. You must continue to follow the controller guidelines outlined in Project 5.
Complete End-to-End Traceability - Since your design update will be completed by the time you turn in this project, you must also have update and complete end-to-end traceability, including:

Sequence Diagrams to Requirements traceability
Requirements to Constraints traceability
Requirements to Statecharts traceability (tables in the Requirements II document).
Statecharts to Code traceability
Complete and correct state and arc traceability comments in your unit tests, as described in Project 5.

Peer Review -

You shall conduct a peer review for the following:

Dispatcher Statechart
DriveControl Statechart
Dispatcher Code Implementation
DriveControl Code Implementation

You should peer review any unit tests you revise.

Team Design Portfolio

The portfolio you submit should contain the most up-to-date design package for your elevator system organized and formatted according to the portfolio guidelines. You are going to update your portfolio every week, so be sure to keep an up to date working copy.

Ensure your design portfolio is complete and consistent.

The following is a partial list of the characteristics your portfolio should exhibit:

Changes requested by the TAs in previous projects have been applied.
All required documents are complete and up-to-date to the extent required by the projects (you do not need to update files or links related to future projects).
All documents include group # and member names at the top of the document. (This includes code, where this information should appear in the header field)
Individual documents have a uniform appearance (i.e., don't look like they were written by 4 individual people and then pieced together)
The issue log is up to date and detailed enough to track changes to the project.

Handing In Results

Each team shall submit exactly one copy of the assignment.
Follow the handin instructions detailed in the Project FAQ to submit your portfolio into the afs handin directory (/afs/ece/class/ece649/Public/handin/project9/group#/ontime/).
Be sure you follow the required format for the directory structure of the portfolio and its location in the handin directories.
Be sure to follow ALL the portfolio guidelines detailed in the Portfolio Layout page.
Any submission that contains files with modification dates after the project deadline will be considered late and subject to a grade deduction (see course policy page for more information).

Grading Criteria:

This assignment counts as one team grade. If you choose to divide the work, remember that you will be graded on the whole assignment. A detailed grading rubric is available here.
Project 9 is worth 145 points:

20 points for updated statecharts
20 points for updated implementation
20 points for updated unit tests
60 points for complete traceability
20 points for peer reviews
5 points for an entry in the Improvements Log that tells us what can be improved about this project. If you encountered any minor bugs that we haven't already addressed, please mention them so we can fix them. If you have no suggestions, say so in your entry for this project.

In addition to points explicitly allocated to traceability and portfolio formatting, we may also make random checks and deduct points if we find that you do not submit a complete and consistent design package.

If you choose to work ahead and go beyond the requirements for this project, that is fine. As with previous project phases, you must meet all the stated project requirements for this phase regardless of how much extra work you do.

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