• design space exploration
• cyber-physical systems
• co-simulation
• bio-inspired algorithm

Cyber-Physical Systems (CPSs) are complex engineered systems which involve many different physical and software components.
Co-simulation techniques, in which sub-systems possibly modelled and simulated with different tools are coordinated by a co-simulation engine, provide a powerful instrument to test the system before it is physically available.
In this thesis, a framework for the co-simulation of a bio-inspired exploration algorithm applied to a group of robots is presented. The framework relies on the integrated tool chain for model-based design of CPSs of the INTO-CPS project. One of the advantages of the framework is that the behaviour of the algorithm can be analysed at different levels of abstraction. First, the algorithm is analysed without modelling the physics of the robots, then the kinematics of the robots is introduced in order to move towards a more realistic scenario.
Results of the co-simulations are analysed and discussed.
A simple interface that provides graphic feedback on the evolution of the co-simulation over a virtual map has been implemented as an additional component of the co-simulation framework.
The design space exploration functionality of the tool chain has been exploited in order to extract good parameters of the algorithm that can ensure high map coverage in a short time.