Foundation Models for Software Engineering of Cyber-Physical Systems: the Road Ahead

Abstract

Foundation Models (FMs), particularly Large Language Models (LLMs), are increasingly used to support various software engineering activities (e.g., coding and testing). Their adoption in software engineering of Cyber-Physical Systems (CPSs) is also growing. However, research in this area remains limited. Most existing studies have primarily focused on LLMs, only one type of FM, leaving ample opportunities to explore other FMs, such as vision-language models. We argue that, in addition to LLMs, other FMs utilizing different data modalities (e.g., images, audio) and multimodal models (which integrate multiple modalities) hold great potential for supporting CPS software engineering, given that these systems process diverse data types. To address this, in this first systematic effort, we present a forward-looking research roadmap for integrating FMs into commonly known phases of CPS software engineering, thereby making it accessible to most software engineers. We derive the roadmap from the literature, emerging trends in FMs, and gaps identified from the literature. The roadmap highlights key challenges and actionable research opportunities for the software engineering community to guide future research. Moreover, we discuss the common challenges associated with applying FMs across six dimensions (e.g., technical, economic and resource, and human aspects). This roadmap aims to provide a visionary guide for researchers and practitioners, outlining directions for future work and performing future empirical studies.