Purpose of the Modelica Association Project Functional Mockup Interface

Development and promotion of the Functional Mock-up Interface (FMI) standard. The intention is to simplify the creation, storage, exchange and (re-) use of dynamic system models of different simulation systems for model/software/hardware-in-the-loop simulation, for cyber physical systems, and other applications.

The FMI specifications are published under the CC-BY-SA 4.0 (Creative Common Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International) license. Source code, such as C-header and XML-schema files, that accompany the specification documents, are provided under the 2-Clause BSD License.

Modelica Association Project (MAP) FMI

Today, the core development of the FMI standard is organised as Modelica Association Project Functional Mock-up Interface under the roof of the Modelica Association. (History below)

Current Project Leader and Deputy: Christian Bertsch (BOSCH) and Torsten Sommer (Dassault Systèmes) projectleader@fmi-standard.org

Current Members of the Steering Committee: AVL List, BOSCH, Dassault Systemes, dSPACE, ESI ITI, Maplesoft, Modelon, PMSF, Siemens PLM, Synopsys

Current Members of the Advisory Committee: ABB, DLR, ETAS, Fraunhofer (IIS/EAS First, SCAI), ITK Engineering, Open Modelica Consortium, TLK Thermo, TWT, University of Halle, Wolfram MathCore AB

How to contribute to the development of the FMI standard

There are FMI tracks at other FMI related events like conferences and design meetings. If you believe you could benefit from the standard or if you would like to contribute to the improvement or distribution of it, please contact us at: contact@fmi-standard.org.

All individual contributors have to sign the Corporate Contributor License Agreement (CCLA) or must be corporate contributors that have signed the CLA of the Modelica Association. Therefore, the first step is to get your company to sign the CCLA/CLA. This ensures that all intellectual property (IP) contributed to the FMI Standard will be licensed to the Modelica Association (MA) which will sublicense the FMI Standard to tool vendors implementing it and end users using it.

With the CCLA signed by your company, you will be granted access to our IT infrastructure and GitHub repositories and you will be added to the FMI Design mailing list where you will be invited to our regular FMI Design Meetings. These are the central information hubs for the Modelica Association Project FMI. Here you can also find out which working groups are currently working on FMI Change Proposals (FCPs). You can join a working group by e-mailing the respective working group leader. If you have other ideas, you may propose to start and lead a new working group by searching for collaborators on the FMI Design mailing list and/or present your ideas at an FMI Design Meeting.

Companies that have shown continued commitment and valuable contributions will be invited to join the FMI Advisory Committee. This membership is mostly ceremonial and its most important function is to recognize publicly who is actively helping to develop the FMI standard.

The next level of involvement is membership in the FMI Steering Committee which is the governing body of the Modelica Association Project FMI. You have to formally apply, explaining your past, current and future involvement and plans regarding the FMI Standard. The FMI Steering Committee will vote on your applications.

Development Process

Today, we largely use github issues and pull requests to technically coordinate our design work.

First version of the FMI Standard

MODELISAR was an European project to improve significantly the design of systems and of embedded software in vehicles. MODELISAR had 29 partners and started in July 2008 and finished, after extension, in December 2011. FMI 1.0 was one of the results of MODELISAR.

MODELISAR partners: ARMINES, AIT, ATB, AVL List, Altran, Daimler, Dassault Systèmes, Dassault Systèmes AB, David, DLR, FhG (First, IIS, EAS, SCAI), Geensoft, Halle University, IFP Energies nouvelles, LMS Imagine, INSPIRE, SIMPACK, ITI, LMS International, QTronic, Trialog, Triphase, TWT, Verhaert, Volkswagen, Volvo

The core MODELISAR development partners agreed to continue FMI specification work under the roof of the Modelica Association as newly created Modelica Association Project Functional Mock-up Interface.

Acknowledgement

The FMI development was partially funded within the ITEA2 project MODELISAR by

Trademark Guidelines for the Use of the FMI Trademark

Preliminaries

The FMI project and the Modelica Association (MA) are asking all members of the public and the FMI community to follow and respect the following usage guidelines for the use of the FMI trademark. The purpose of the trademark registration is to protect the use of the word-mark FMI in the protected application domains from any usage that is contrary to the mission and values of the trademark owner, the Modelica Association.
The purpose of this guideline is to make sure that any use of the FMI trademark agrees with these guidelines and strengthens the brand and value of the FMI standard. Further, the guidelines will try to make sure that no confusion or misinformation can arise from the use of the FMI trademark. At the same time, the Modelica Association wants to encourage as many commercial companies and open source software developers to support the FMI standard in a high quality of implementation and put as little administrative burden as possible. The MA encourages to mention the FMI standard with a proper reference. The main reference in any tool documentation should contain a pointer to the official FMI website https://fmi-standard.org. The Modelica Association expects all tool vendors that implement the FMI standard to participate in the cross-check protocol, especially those using FMI in their product name.

Trademark Usage Guidelines

The use of the letters FMI in a product name or other relevant reference is allowed when

• The use is clearly a reference to adhering to the standard.

The use of the letters FMI in a product name, reference or other relevant context is not allowed when:

• The use can cause confusion whether the FMI standard is followed (e.g. using FMI with a version number that is not released by the FMI project),
• The use can be interpreted as a variant, subset or improvement of the original FMI standard (e.g. using a tool name, say FMIplus, that can be interpreted as supporting with extensions/improvements with respect to one of the FMI versions),
• The use spreads wrong or misleading information about the FMI standard
• The use mocks or degrades the FMI standard

The FMI Steering committee reserves the right to determine whether a use of FMI violates these guidelines and will ask any offender to cease and desist from using the FMI trademark in a non-approved way. The FMI steering committee also reserves the right to retract the permission of the use of the term FMI in a product name when the product owner does not submit to the duties of a responsible member of the FMI community by participating in the cross-checking protocol, or when the tool developer does over a longer period not fix known errors in their FMI support. If you are in doubt about your intended usage of the FMI trademark, please contact contact@fmi-standard.org.

Standardization Projects and Groups Related to FMI

MAP SSP

In many applications there is the need to design, simulate and execute a network of components (simulation models, software, hardware etc.). In order to be able to do this tool independently and seamlessly, the purposes of the “System Structure and Parameterization of Components for Virtual System Design (SSP)” project are:

• Define a standardized way to store and apply parameters to these components.
• Define a standardized format for the connection structure for a network of components.
• The developed standard / APIs should be usable in all stages of development process (architecture definition, integration, simulation, test in MiL, SiL, HiL).

Link to project page.

MAP DCP

The DCP is a platform and communication medium independent standard for the integration of real-time systems into simulation environments. The DCP is standardized by the Modelica Association, where it is maintained as a Modelica Association Project (MAP).

Whereas the FMI standard represents an application programming interface (API), the DCP represents a communication protocol. Therefore, it becomes possible to integrate various kinds of systems. The DCP specification is suitable for a broad range of computing platforms. It may be implemented on hardware as well as in software. Typical examples are middleware, runtime environments, (virtualized) operating systems, electronic control units, FPGAs, and many more.

Link to project page.

ASAM XIL-MA

The ITEA2 project MODELISAR noticed the parallel work of the ASAM XIL standardization group. Both groups came discussed and concluded not to develop a parallel standard but to cooperate. The result of this cooperation is available as ASAM XIL-MA, which is a subset from ASAM XIL standard. XIL-MA is open to public and the documentation of the standard can be obtained from ASAM for free without membership.

Link to specification.

ProSTEP Smart System Engineering

One of the topics of the Smart Systems Engineering project is to find solutions for the cross-disciplinary and cross-enterprise exchange of behavioral models. The Functional Mockup Interface (FMI) is viewed as the basic technology for the exchange.

Link to project page.