This project addresses the needs of machine, vehicle and component builders, monitoring system manufacturers and developers of software engineering tools.

Mechatronic systems are becoming increasingly complex, partly because of the increasing number of monitoring functionalities. In addition to the traditional functions (eg process and performance monitoring), new ones are constantly being added (eg in-line quality control, online status monitoring, comfort estimation).

Traditionally, each monitoring functionality is developed depending on the others and the sensors are not divided among the different functionalities. This approach simplifies the design process, but the result is not optimal. It leads to mechatronic systems with too many sensors, spread over too many locations. Until now, with relatively few monitoring functionalities, this non-optimality was often still acceptable. But with the increasing number of monitoring functionality, this non-optimality becomes too great.

Traditionally, each monitoring functionality is also tested separately and through real-life experiments. However, the increasing number of functionalities now multiplies the test costs and so a new approach is required.

In short, companies need to optimize the way they design and test multifunctional multi-sensor monitoring systems. With this project, we aim to develop a structured software tool-supported methodology for designing and virtual testing of multifunctional multi-sensor monitoring systems.