Large language models (LLMs) have demonstrated excellent capabilities in generating structured diagrams from natural language descriptions. In particular, they have shown great promise in generating sequence diagrams for software engineering, typically represented in a text-based syntax such as Mermaid. However, systematic evaluations in this space remain underdeveloped as there is a lack of existing benchmarks to assess the LLM's correctness in this task. To address this shortcoming, we introduce MermaidSeqBench, a human-verified and LLM-synthetically-extended benchmark for assessing an LLM's capabilities in generating Mermaid sequence diagrams from textual prompts. The benchmark consists of a core set of 132 samples, starting from a small set of manually crafted and verified flows. These were expanded via a hybrid methodology combining human annotation, in-context LLM prompting, and rule-based variation generation. Our benchmark uses an LLM-as-a-judge model to assess Mermaid sequence diagram generation across fine-grained metrics, including syntax correctness, activation handling, error handling, and practical usability. We perform initial evaluations on numerous state-of-the-art LLMs and utilize multiple LLM judge models to demonstrate the effectiveness and flexibility of our benchmark. Our results reveal significant capability gaps across models and evaluation modes. Our proposed benchmark provides a foundation for advancing research in structured diagram generation and for developing more rigorous, fine-grained evaluation methodologies.

Large language models (LLMs) excel at generating code from natural language (NL) descriptions. However, the plain textual descriptions are inherently ambiguous and often fail to capture complex requirements like intricate system behaviors, conditional logic, and architectural constraints; implicit data dependencies in service-oriented architectures are difficult to infer and handle correctly. To bridge this gap, we propose a novel step-by-step code generation framework named UML2Dep by leveraging unambiguous formal specifications of complex requirements. First, we introduce an enhanced Unified Modeling Language (UML) sequence diagram tailored for service-oriented architectures. This diagram extends traditional visual syntax by integrating decision tables and API specifications, explicitly formalizing structural relationships and business logic flows in service interactions to rigorously eliminate linguistic ambiguity. Second, recognizing the critical role of data flow, we introduce a dedicated data dependency inference (DDI) task. DDI systematically constructs an explicit data dependency graph prior to actual code synthesis. To ensure reliability, we formalize DDI as a constrained mathematical reasoning task through novel prompting strategies, aligning with LLMs' excellent mathematical strengths. Additional static parsing and dependency pruning further reduce context complexity and cognitive load associated with intricate specifications, thereby enhancing reasoning accuracy and efficiency.

Telecom domain 3GPP documents are replete with images containing sequence diagrams. Advances in Vision-Language Large Models (VLMs) have eased conversion of such images to machine-readable PlantUML (puml) formats. However, there is a gap in evaluation of such conversions - existing works do not compare puml scripts for various components. In this work, we propose performance metrics to measure the effectiveness of such conversions. A dataset of sequence diagrams from 3GPP documents is chosen to be representative of domain-specific actual scenarios. We compare puml outputs from two VLMs - Claude Sonnet and GPT-4V - against manually created ground truth representations. We use version control tools to capture differences and introduce standard performance metrics to measure accuracies along various components: participant identification, message flow accuracy, sequence ordering, and grouping construct preservation. We demonstrate effectiveness of proposed metrics in quantifying conversion errors across various components of puml scripts. The results show that nodes, edges and messages are accurately captured. However, we observe that VLMs do not necessarily perform well on complex structures such as notes, box, groups. Our experiments and performance metrics indicates a need for better representation of these components in training data for fine-tuned VLMs.

Systems built on the Robot Operating System (ROS) are increasingly easy to assemble, yet hard to govern and reliably coordinate. Beyond the sheer number of subsystems involved, the difficulty stems from their diversity and interaction depth. In this paper, we use a compact heterogeneous robotic system (HeROS), combining mobile and manipulation capabilities, as a demonstration vehicle under dynamically changing tasks. Notably, all its subsystems are powered by ROS. The use of compatible interfaces and other ROS integration capabilities simplifies the construction of such systems. However, this only addresses part of the complexity: the semantic coherence and structural traceability are even more important for precise coordination and call for deliberate engineering methods. The Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) discipline, which emerged from the experience of complexity management in large-scale engineering domains, offers the methodological foundations needed. Despite their strengths in complementary aspects of robotics systems engineering, the lack of a unified approach to integrate ROS and MBSE hinders the full potential of these tools. Motivated by the anticipated impact of such a synergy in robotics practice, we propose a structured methodology based on MeROS - a SysML metamodel created specifically to put the ROS-based systems into the focus of the MBSE workflow. As its methodological backbone, we adapt the well-known V-model to this context, illustrating how complex robotic systems can be designed with traceability and validation capabilities embedded into their lifecycle using practices familiar to engineering teams.

UML and ER diagrams are foundational in computer science education but come with challenges for learners due to the need for abstract thinking, contextual understanding, and mastery of both syntax and semantics. These complexities are difficult to address through traditional teaching methods, which often struggle to provide scalable, personalized feedback, especially in large classes. We introduce DUET (Diagrammatic UML & ER Tutor), a prototype of an LLM-based tool, which converts a reference diagram and a student-submitted diagram into a textual representation and provides structured feedback based on the differences. It uses a multi-stage LLM pipeline to compare diagrams and generate reflective feedback. Furthermore, the tool enables analytical insights for educators, aiming to foster self-directed learning and inform instructional strategies. We evaluated DUET through semi-structured interviews with six participants, including two educators and four teaching assistants. They identified strengths such as accessibility, scalability, and learning support alongside limitations, including reliability and potential misuse. Participants also suggested potential improvements, such as bulk upload functionality and interactive clarification features. DUET presents a promising direction for integrating LLMs into modeling education and offers a foundation for future classroom integration and empirical evaluation.

The Unified Modeling Language is a standardized visual language widely used for modeling and documenting the design of software systems. Although many tools generate UML diagrams from UML code, generating executable UML code from image-based UML diagrams remains challenging. This paper proposes a new approach to generate UML code using a large multimodal language model automatically. Synthetic UML activity and sequence diagram datasets were created to train and test the model. We compared standard fine-tuning with LoRA techniques to optimize base models. The experiments measured code generation accuracy across different model sizes and training strategies. These results demonstrated that domain-adapted MM-LLMs perform for UML code generation automation, whereby, at the best model, it achieved BLEU and SSIM scores of 0.779 and 0.942 on sequence diagrams. This will enable the modernization of legacy systems and decrease the manual effort in software development workflows.

Large Language Models (LLMs) have increasingly demonstrated the ability to facilitate the development of multi-agent systems that allow the interpretation of thoughts and actions generated by each individual. Promising advancements have also been made in LLM-based interaction with existing worlds, particularly in interacting with simulated environments. This paper aims to integrate both aforementioned topics (agents & world interaction) into a single simulation where multiple agents can work together to solve a problem, modeling how groups of humans can often solve problems better than individuals. By showing whether LLMs demonstrate the synergy of human collaboration, it could lead to advancements in the applications of LLMs. We implemented two simulations: a physical studio apartment with two roommates, and another where agents collaborate to complete a programming task. We provide a multi-agent framework, discuss the performance of the agents in each simulation, and discuss potential future additions.

Complementing natural language (NL) requirements with graphical models can improve stakeholders' communication and provide directions for system design. However, creating models from requirements involves manual effort. The advent of generative large language models (LLMs), ChatGPT being a notable example, offers promising avenues for automated assistance in model generation. This paper investigates the capability of ChatGPT to generate a specific type of model, i.e., UML sequence diagrams, from NL requirements. We conduct a qualitative study in which we examine the sequence diagrams generated by ChatGPT for 28 requirements documents of various types and from different domains. Observations from the analysis of the generated diagrams have systematically been captured through evaluation logs, and categorized through thematic analysis. Our results indicate that, although the models generally conform to the standard and exhibit a reasonable level of understandability, their completeness and correctness with respect to the specified requirements often present challenges. This issue is particularly pronounced in the presence of requirements smells, such as ambiguity and inconsistency. The insights derived from this study can influence the practical utilization of LLMs in the RE process, and open the door to novel RE-specific prompting strategies targeting effective model generation.

Today is the era of intelligence in machines. With the advances in Artificial Intelligence, machines have started to impersonate different human traits, a chatbot is the next big thing in the domain of conversational services. A chatbot is a virtual person who is capable to carry out a natural conversation with people. They can include skills that enable them to converse with the humans in audio, visual, or textual formats. Artificial intelligence conversational entities, also called chatbots, conversational agents, or dialogue system, are an excellent example of such machines. Obtaining the right information at the right time and place is the key to effective disaster management. The term "disaster management" encompasses both natural and human-caused disasters. To assist citizens, our project is to create a COVID Assistant to provide the need of up to date information to be available 24 hours. With the growth in the World Wide Web, it is quite intelligible that users are interested in the swift and relatedly correct information for their hunt. A chatbot can be seen as a question-and-answer system in which experts provide knowledge to solicit users. This master thesis is dedicated to discuss COVID Assistant chatbot and explain each component in detail. The design of the proposed chatbot is introduced by its seven components: Ontology, Web Scraping module, DB, State Machine, keyword Extractor, Trained chatbot, and User Interface.

Robust methods for representing, generalizing, and sharing knowledge across various robotics systems and configurations are important in many domains of robotics research and application. In this paper we present a method for modeling tasks and robot skills to simplify the programming and reuse of knowledge between robots in manufacturing environments. Specifically, we propose an assembly taxonomy designed to represent the decomposition of high-level, complex assembly tasks into simple skills and skill primitives that the robot must use in a specified sequence. By using programming by demonstration to populate the taxonomy, we propose a method to easily interact with and reuse knowledge in various manufacturing robotics systems, making it possible to reduce programming time and overhead. We present both a detailed discussion of this taxonomy, as well as an example of how the taxonomy can be applied to an assembly task.