1. Design your System with Object-Process Methodology – OPM
the New ISO 19450
Dov Dori
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Technion, Israel Institute of Technology
SRI International
Princeton, NJ
July 20, 2015

2. How was this talk initiated? What will it be about?
Correspondence and Skype with Dr. Maneesh Singh of SRI after getting invitation here
I asked for an example to be used in the talk
I received a specification of OSRVT: Video Moving Target Indication Capability (coming up)
I will first present Object-Process Methodology – OPM, the New ISO 19450
Then we will model the system using OPM and discuss potential benefits

3. OSRVT: Video Moving Target Indication Capability
Presented to
SRI International
November 10, 2014

4. One System Remote Video Terminal System
MTI

5. Objective
Video Moving Target Indication* (VMTI) capability for OSRVT using platform data stream (e.g., MPEG2 TS)
*A computational process of locating a moving object (or several ones) in a video frame. No ID reported.
Note: Introduction of such a capability will have little or no impact on other OSRVT operations.

6. OSRVT VMTI System
HMI CSCI
(Front
End)
VMTI CSCI
(Back End) 6

7. VMTI Module STAB MTI OSRVT OSRVT Input Imagery MTI ROI’s Metadata (to)
Screened
Imagery
Screened
Imagery
Screened
Imagery
Con t r o l e I m a g e Q u l i t y
STAB O v e r l a y D t c
MTI
VMTI Imagery
OSRVT
OSRVT
Overlay
Mask
MTI
ROI’s
(per frame)
Synchronized
F2F Alignment
Metadata
F2F Alignment
MTI Params
Enable/Disable
F2F Alignment
(from)
(to)
Generates MTI params from metadata
Screens input frames for image defects
Aligns consecutive frames for stabilized stream
Direct method
Feature based
Detects image overlays, generates mask
Detects moving targets outside of overlay mask in screened, stabilized imagery
Options

8. Moving Target Indication
Detection
Verification
Video frames (stabilized)
with moving targets
Blob
Extraction
Laplacian
Pyramid
Generation
Change/
Foreground
Detection
Filtering +
Video frames
(original)
with moving target indications
(VMTI imagery)
Moving Target Indication Core
Overlay mask imagery
Generates multi-resolution features (Laplacian)
Detects pixel-based spatio-temporal changes, relative to stabilized “background,” due to “foreground” features from a particular pyramid level
(as specified by MTI parameters)
Extracts “blobs” or connected foreground “change” pixels
Filters “blobs” fulfilling motion consistency (temporal) check +
MTI parameters

9. MTI Core Details + + Video frames (stabilized) with moving targets
Foreground Detection (optional)
Adaptive Background
Modeling
Foreground/Background
Segmentation
Video frames (stabilized)
with moving targets
Laplacian
Pyramid
Generation
Compute
spatiotemporal
image
gradients
Compute
Normal Flow
values
Threshold
Normal Flow
values
Temporal
Filtering for
Consistent Pixels Fn
RFn
NFn +
Normal Flow Based Change Detection
MFn
Connected
Component
Labeling
Extract
pixel
groups
using labels
Compute
Optical
Flow
Reverse flow
warp Insp Blobs,
Check Temporal
Consistency
Check
Motion
Significance
Overlay mask imagery
BFn
FFn +
MTI parameters
Blob Extraction
Optical Flow Based Blob Filtering
Visual Odometry
(Camera R, T)
From Optical Flow
De-rotate
Optical Flow
Field
Compute Epipole
And Enforce
Epipolar Constraint
on Blob Pixels
Update Blobs
After Removing
Pixels Failing
Epipolar Constraint
PFn
Video frames
(original)
with moving target indications
(VMTI imagery)
Parallax Detection (optional)
Fn: Histogram equalized frame w/ stab params
RFn: Laplacian of Fn+ Stabilized ref frame
NFn: Fn+ Binarized Fn of change pixels
MFn: Fn+ Binarized Fn of consistent change pixels
BFn: Fn+ Blobs of change pixels
FFn: Fn + consistent blobs + Optical Flow Field
PFn: Fn + consistent blobs (following Parallax Detection)

10. What is Conceptual Modeling?
A systematic, formalized process of describing, specifying, designing or explaining ideas, systems, products or processes through a model.
Applicable to both
Science – Studying what is known and what is missing to satisfy human thirst for knowledge, and
Engineering – Designing systems to benefit humans, based on sound scientific principles
Science can be thought of as reverse engineering of nature

11. Why Conceptual Modeling?
Convert tacit, fragmented knowledge into explicit, integrative knowledge.
Construct concise models – mental pictures of
natural systems [science] and
artificial systems [engineering]
while integrating structure and behaviour
at all detail levels.
Communicate the model to stakeholders
through formal, unambiguous, actionable descriptions.

12. A conceptual modeling language that is
simple yet expressive, and
intuitive yet formal
Let the search begin!

13. Universal Ontology
Ontology: a set of concepts for describing a domain (industry, banking, military, botany, healthcare…) and systems within it.
Universal Ontology: a domain-independent set of concepts for describing systems in the universe, both natural and man-made.

14. Fundamental question 1: What is needed to describe the universe?
Answer:
Describing the universe requires things and relations among them.
Object-Process Methodology – OPM, is a holistic systems paradigm which enables specification, explanation, understanding and communicating natural and artificial systems in any domain and at any level of complexity.
OPM enables constructing a single unifying system model in two complementary, equivalent modalities: graphics and natural language. This dual representation provides for the ability to represent domain-independent knowledge clearly and explicitly, making it possible for people with very little experience to explain and understand the function, structure and behavior of systems in nature, the environment, and man-made systems.
Using OPCAT - an elaborate OPM-supporting software environment, humans can engage in educational and creative activities that are facilitated by the intuitive, albeit formal, dual graphic and textual representations. Natural language text is automatically generated on the fly form the graphic input and vice versa.
Applications include constructing system models, architecting and modeling artificial multidisciplinary systems, generating and testing them, and supporting them throughout their lifecycles. The generation is made possible, among other things, by automatically generating the code associated with the informational part of the system, while testing it is done by animated simulation of the system's behavior.
9/18/2018

15. Question 2: What can these things “do”?
Answer:
Things can exist or happen.
Object-Process Methodology – OPM, is a holistic systems paradigm which enables specification, explanation, understanding and communicating natural and artificial systems in any domain and at any level of complexity.
OPM enables constructing a single unifying system model in two complementary, equivalent modalities: graphics and natural language. This dual representation provides for the ability to represent domain-independent knowledge clearly and explicitly, making it possible for people with very little experience to explain and understand the function, structure and behavior of systems in nature, the environment, and man-made systems.
Using OPCAT - an elaborate OPM-supporting software environment, humans can engage in educational and creative activities that are facilitated by the intuitive, albeit formal, dual graphic and textual representations. Natural language text is automatically generated on the fly form the graphic input and vice versa.
Applications include constructing system models, architecting and modeling artificial multidisciplinary systems, generating and testing them, and supporting them throughout their lifecycles. The generation is made possible, among other things, by automatically generating the code associated with the informational part of the system, while testing it is done by animated simulation of the system's behavior.
9/18/2018

16. Question 3: What are the things that exist in the world?
Answer:
Objects exist.
They are static.
Object-Process Methodology – OPM, is a holistic systems paradigm which enables specification, explanation, understanding and communicating natural and artificial systems in any domain and at any level of complexity.
OPM enables constructing a single unifying system model in two complementary, equivalent modalities: graphics and natural language. This dual representation provides for the ability to represent domain-independent knowledge clearly and explicitly, making it possible for people with very little experience to explain and understand the function, structure and behavior of systems in nature, the environment, and man-made systems.
Using OPCAT - an elaborate OPM-supporting software environment, humans can engage in educational and creative activities that are facilitated by the intuitive, albeit formal, dual graphic and textual representations. Natural language text is automatically generated on the fly form the graphic input and vice versa.
Applications include constructing system models, architecting and modeling artificial multidisciplinary systems, generating and testing them, and supporting them throughout their lifecycles. The generation is made possible, among other things, by automatically generating the code associated with the informational part of the system, while testing it is done by animated simulation of the system's behavior.
9/18/2018

17. Question 4: What are the things that happen in the world?
Answer:
Processes happen.
They are dynamic.
Object-Process Methodology – OPM, is a holistic systems paradigm which enables specification, explanation, understanding and communicating natural and artificial systems in any domain and at any level of complexity.
OPM enables constructing a single unifying system model in two complementary, equivalent modalities: graphics and natural language. This dual representation provides for the ability to represent domain-independent knowledge clearly and explicitly, making it possible for people with very little experience to explain and understand the function, structure and behavior of systems in nature, the environment, and man-made systems.
Using OPCAT - an elaborate OPM-supporting software environment, humans can engage in educational and creative activities that are facilitated by the intuitive, albeit formal, dual graphic and textual representations. Natural language text is automatically generated on the fly form the graphic input and vice versa.
Applications include constructing system models, architecting and modeling artificial multidisciplinary systems, generating and testing them, and supporting them throughout their lifecycles. The generation is made possible, among other things, by automatically generating the code associated with the informational part of the system, while testing it is done by animated simulation of the system's behavior.
9/18/2018

18. Question 5: How do objects and processes relate?
Answer:
Processes happen to objects.
While happening,
processes transform objects.
Object-Process Methodology – OPM, is a holistic systems paradigm which enables specification, explanation, understanding and communicating natural and artificial systems in any domain and at any level of complexity.
OPM enables constructing a single unifying system model in two complementary, equivalent modalities: graphics and natural language. This dual representation provides for the ability to represent domain-independent knowledge clearly and explicitly, making it possible for people with very little experience to explain and understand the function, structure and behavior of systems in nature, the environment, and man-made systems.
Using OPCAT - an elaborate OPM-supporting software environment, humans can engage in educational and creative activities that are facilitated by the intuitive, albeit formal, dual graphic and textual representations. Natural language text is automatically generated on the fly form the graphic input and vice versa.
Applications include constructing system models, architecting and modeling artificial multidisciplinary systems, generating and testing them, and supporting them throughout their lifecycles. The generation is made possible, among other things, by automatically generating the code associated with the informational part of the system, while testing it is done by animated simulation of the system's behavior.
9/18/2018

19. OPM Things: Objects and Processes
Object: A thing that exists or might exist physically or informatically.
Process: A thing that transforms one or more objects.

20. Physical vs. Informatical Things

21. OPM’s only two building blocks:
1. Stateful Object
2. Process
All the other elements are relations between things, expressed graphically as links.

22. processes transform objects. Transform? What does that mean?
Transforming means
creating an object or
destroying an object or
affecting an object.
Object-Process Methodology – OPM, is a holistic systems paradigm which enables specification, explanation, understanding and communicating natural and artificial systems in any domain and at any level of complexity.
OPM enables constructing a single unifying system model in two complementary, equivalent modalities: graphics and natural language. This dual representation provides for the ability to represent domain-independent knowledge clearly and explicitly, making it possible for people with very little experience to explain and understand the function, structure and behavior of systems in nature, the environment, and man-made systems.
Using OPCAT - an elaborate OPM-supporting software environment, humans can engage in educational and creative activities that are facilitated by the intuitive, albeit formal, dual graphic and textual representations. Natural language text is automatically generated on the fly form the graphic input and vice versa.
Applications include constructing system models, architecting and modeling artificial multidisciplinary systems, generating and testing them, and supporting them throughout their lifecycles. The generation is made possible, among other things, by automatically generating the code associated with the informational part of the system, while testing it is done by animated simulation of the system's behavior.
9/18/2018

23. Transforming an object by a process can be done in three ways
(1) Process consumes the object

24. (2) Process creates the object
Consumption
Creation

25. processes affect objects. Affecting? What does that mean?
A process affects an object by changing its state.
Hence, objects must be stateful – they must have states.
Object-Process Methodology – OPM, is a holistic systems paradigm which enables specification, explanation, understanding and communicating natural and artificial systems in any domain and at any level of complexity.
OPM enables constructing a single unifying system model in two complementary, equivalent modalities: graphics and natural language. This dual representation provides for the ability to represent domain-independent knowledge clearly and explicitly, making it possible for people with very little experience to explain and understand the function, structure and behavior of systems in nature, the environment, and man-made systems.
Using OPCAT - an elaborate OPM-supporting software environment, humans can engage in educational and creative activities that are facilitated by the intuitive, albeit formal, dual graphic and textual representations. Natural language text is automatically generated on the fly form the graphic input and vice versa.
Applications include constructing system models, architecting and modeling artificial multidisciplinary systems, generating and testing them, and supporting them throughout their lifecycles. The generation is made possible, among other things, by automatically generating the code associated with the informational part of the system, while testing it is done by animated simulation of the system's behavior.
9/18/2018

26. (3) Process affects object by changing the object’s state:
The third and last kind of object transformation:
(3) Process affects object by changing the object’s state:

27. The three transformation kinds
Consumption:
Creation:
OPM uses a single type of diagram –
Object-Process Diagram (OPD)
Graphic edit operations are translated on the fly to natural language –
Object-Process Language (OPL)
Catering to dual channel processing
State Change:

28. The graphics-text equivalence OPM principle
Any model fact expressed graphically in an OPD is also expressed textually in the corresponding OPL paragraph.
Caters to the dual channel cognitive assumption (Mayer, 2010)

29. What are the two major aspects of any system?
Structure – the static aspect: what the system is made of.
Time-independent
Behavior – the dynamic aspect: how the system changes over time.
Time-dependent
Object-Process Methodology – OPM, is a holistic systems paradigm which enables specification, explanation, understanding and communicating natural and artificial systems in any domain and at any level of complexity.
OPM enables constructing a single unifying system model in two complementary, equivalent modalities: graphics and natural language. This dual representation provides for the ability to represent domain-independent knowledge clearly and explicitly, making it possible for people with very little experience to explain and understand the function, structure and behavior of systems in nature, the environment, and man-made systems.
Using OPCAT - an elaborate OPM-supporting software environment, humans can engage in educational and creative activities that are facilitated by the intuitive, albeit formal, dual graphic and textual representations. Natural language text is automatically generated on the fly form the graphic input and vice versa.
Applications include constructing system models, architecting and modeling artificial multidisciplinary systems, generating and testing them, and supporting them throughout their lifecycles. The generation is made possible, among other things, by automatically generating the code associated with the informational part of the system, while testing it is done by animated simulation of the system's behavior.
9/18/2018

30. What third aspect is specific to man-made systems?
Function – the utilitarian, subjective aspect:
Why is the system built?
For whom is the system built?
Who benefits from operating the system?
Object-Process Methodology – OPM, is a holistic systems paradigm which enables specification, explanation, understanding and communicating natural and artificial systems in any domain and at any level of complexity.
OPM enables constructing a single unifying system model in two complementary, equivalent modalities: graphics and natural language. This dual representation provides for the ability to represent domain-independent knowledge clearly and explicitly, making it possible for people with very little experience to explain and understand the function, structure and behavior of systems in nature, the environment, and man-made systems.
Using OPCAT - an elaborate OPM-supporting software environment, humans can engage in educational and creative activities that are facilitated by the intuitive, albeit formal, dual graphic and textual representations. Natural language text is automatically generated on the fly form the graphic input and vice versa.
Applications include constructing system models, architecting and modeling artificial multidisciplinary systems, generating and testing them, and supporting them throughout their lifecycles. The generation is made possible, among other things, by automatically generating the code associated with the informational part of the system, while testing it is done by animated simulation of the system's behavior.
9/18/2018

31. The Object-Process Theorem Stateful objects, processes, and relations among them constitute a necessary and sufficient universal ontology.
Object-Process Methodology – OPM, is a holistic systems paradigm which enables specification, explanation, understanding and communicating natural and artificial systems in any domain and at any level of complexity.
OPM enables constructing a single unifying system model in two complementary, equivalent modalities: graphics and natural language. This dual representation provides for the ability to represent domain-independent knowledge clearly and explicitly, making it possible for people with very little experience to explain and understand the function, structure and behavior of systems in nature, the environment, and man-made systems.
Using OPCAT - an elaborate OPM-supporting software environment, humans can engage in educational and creative activities that are facilitated by the intuitive, albeit formal, dual graphic and textual representations. Natural language text is automatically generated on the fly form the graphic input and vice versa.
Applications include constructing system models, architecting and modeling artificial multidisciplinary systems, generating and testing them, and supporting them throughout their lifecycles. The generation is made possible, among other things, by automatically generating the code associated with the informational part of the system, while testing it is done by animated simulation of the system's behavior.
9/18/2018

32. Complexity Management with OPM
Systems are inherently complex.
To alleviate this complexity, in OPM, it is managed by detail decomposition through three refinement-abstraction:
In-zooming – Out-zooming
Unfolding – Folding
State expression – suppression.

33. In-zooming – Out-zooming Example Process Performance Controlling - a metamodel from ISO 19450
All the OPDs, at any detail level, are self-similar.
They contain only stateful objects, processes, and relations.

34. Back to OSRVT – Moving Target Indicator:
What is the Function of this system?
Describe in three words, the last being a verb ending with ing (gerund)
This will be our starting point of the OPM model

35. The Function:
Moving Target Indicating

36. Who is the Beneficiary?
Who benefits from operating the system?

37. What attribute of War Fighter changes value by operating the system, such that benefit is created?

38. What are the system’s input and output?

39. What is the name of the system we are developing?

40. The next detail level: Zooming into the Moving Target Indicating Function

41. The Auto-Generated OPL Text:

42. Summary: OPM Aspect Unification
The three system aspects:
Function (why the system is built),
Structure (static aspect: what is the system made of), and
Behavior (dynamic aspect: how the system changes over time)
Are expressed bi-modally, in graphics and equivalent text
In a single model

43. Value Proposition to SRI International
Model requirements together with the customer
Use this model as a basis for concept generation and their evaluation and selection of best one
Achieve shared understanding and agreement of multidisciplinary engineering team
Communicate the solution model with the customer
Use the model across all the system lifecycle: detailed design, integration, testing, deployment, maintenance, retirement…

44. OPM Resources:
Book: Object-Process Methodology - A Holistic Systems Paradigm, Springer Verlag, Berlin, Heidelberg, New York, 2002.
Website: Enterprise Systems Modeling Laboratory contains
journal & conference papers,
free OPCAT software,
presentations,
projects, and more.

45. Questions and (hopefully) Answers Join the growing OPM community Here!
Contact: Dov Dori –
Questions and
(hopefully) Answers

46. Essence and Affiliation
Essence pertains to the thing’s nature:
denotes whether the thing is physical or informatical.
Affiliation pertains to the thing’s scope:
denotes whether the thing is systemic, i.e. part of the system, or environmental, i.e. part of the system’s environment
The Essence-Affiliation attribute value combinations

47. Cyber-Physical Systems: Characteristics
Software-controlled physical systems
Include physical and cybernetic components
An agent – a human decision-maker or an information & decision-making system – is the cybernetic component
Hardware (motors, actuators, VLSI chips…) is the physical component
Physical processes signal and induce cybernetic events
Cybernetic processes signal and induce physical events

48. Essence is key to modeling Cyber-Physical systems
Physical objects in the model represent what is really “out there” – actual states and values of objects
Informatical objects represent information about their corresponding physical objects
Only informatical objects are available to a decision making agent (human or artificial)

49. Cyber-Physical Gap
A cyber-physical gap exists when the state of the informatical object incorrectly indicates the state of the physical object is supposed to represent

50. The cyber-physical gap – a critical factor in modern systems design
It must be accounted for when designing systems, notably safety-critical ones
OPM is most suitable for modeling cyber-physical gaps
This is due to its notion of essence – physical vs. informatical things

51. Cyber-physical gap example: Three-Mile Island Accident
First cyber-physical gap –
Incorrect instrument reading:
PORV is (stuck) open,
but due to the false PORV closed indication, the Crew determines
PORV is closed!
A critical conflict between reality and its cybernetic mirroring!
Full presentation in

52. Appendix: SysML and OPM – a brief comparison
Feature
SysML
OPM
Theoretical foundation
UML; Object-Oriented paradigm
Minimal universal ontology;
Object-Process Theorem
Standard documentation number of pages
1670
( )
130
( )
Standardization body
OMG (2006)
ISO (2014)
Number of diagram kinds 9 1
Graphic modality
yes
Textual modality no
Physical-informatical distinction
Systemic-environmental distinction