Beyond Requirements Falsification: Semi-formal methods and tools for the analysis of Cyber-Physical Systems

ABSTRACT: Correct-by-design synthesis methods for Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) are still in their infancy for CPS with complex physical dynamics. For that reason, a combination of design theories for simpler systems and/or ad-hoc design approaches are utilized. Hence, numerous design and implementation errors are discovered while CPS are operational in the field. Such errors can have catastrophic effects to human life and to the economy. Over the last few years, requirements guided falsification methods have proven to be a practical approach to the verification problem of industrial size CPS. However, requirements falsification is just one component of the necessary tools for the development of safe and reliable CPS. In this talk, we provide an overview of our research in providing support for all the stages of the development for CPS, from formal requirements elicitation and mining to system conformance to on-line monitoring. Most of our methods have been implemented in a Matlab (TM) toolbox called S-TaLiRo (System’s TemporAl LogIc Robustness). Finally, in this talk, we demonstrate that S-TaLiRo can provide answers to challenge problems from the automotive industry.

BIO: Georgios Fainekos is an Associate Professor at the School of Computing, Informatics and Decision Systems Engineering (SCIDSE) at Arizona State University (ASU). He is director of the Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) Lab and he is currently affiliated with the NSF I/UCR Center for Embedded Systems (CES) at ASU. He received his Ph.D. in Computer and Information Science from the University of Pennsylvania in 2008 where he was affiliated with the GRASP laboratory. He holds a Diploma degree (B.Sc. & M.Sc.) in Mechanical Engineering from the National Technical University of Athens and an M.Sc. degree in Computer and Information Science from the University of Pennsylvania. Before joining ASU, he held a Postdoctoral Researcher position at NEC Laboratories America in the System Analysis & Verification Group. He is currently working on Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) and robotics. In particular, his expertise is on formal methods, logic, artificial intelligence, optimization and control theory. His research has applications on automotive systems, medical devices, autonomous (ground and aerial) robots and human-robot interaction (HRI). In 2013, Dr. Fainekos received the NSF CAREER award. He was also recipient of the SCIDSE Best Researcher Junior Faculty award for 2013 and of the 2008 Frank Anger Memorial ACM SIGBED/SIGSOFT Student Award. Two of his conference papers have been nominated for student best paper awards.

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