Whether in aviation, industry or entertainment electronics - embedded systems are an integral part of everyday life. However, the current state of technology limits the possibilities of use and the economic potential. The existing software technology needs a central control and can only be used in completely known and stable environments.

Within the project CrESt, the project partners are working on concepts and tools to enable embedded systems to intelligent and independent collaboration. Furthermore, the architectures of the systems are to be further developed so they can be used in a partially unknown environment.

In addition to the model-based development, the application to four selected case studies is an elementary part of the project:

• Cooperative vehicle automation
• Convertable factories
• Distributed power generation
• Cooperating transport robots

In several subprojects Fraunhofer FOKUS accompanies the development of analytical methods as well as the creation of requirements for modeling approaches, verification and validation. Furthermore, FOKUS conducts the case studies as a subproject coordinator.

It is a long-term goal to enable machines to make their own decisions. For this purpose, 12 research institutes and 11 business partners work together, including six companies from Berlin and Brandenburg. The project is supported by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) with about 15 million euros as part of the program “IKT 2020 software intensive embedded systems”.