CPS: Medium: Collaborative Research: Credible Autocoding and Verification of Embedded Software (CrAVES)

Abstract: The CrAVES project seeks to lay down intellectual foundations for credible autocoding of embedded systems, by which graphical control system specifications that satisfy given open-loop and closed-loop properties are automatically transformed into source code guaranteed to satisfy the same properties. The goal is that the correctness of these codes can be easily and independently verified by dedicated proof checking systems. During the autocoding process, the properties of control system specifications are transformed into proven assertions explicitly written in the resulting source code. Thus CrAVES aims at transforming the extensive safety and reliability analyses conducted by control system engineers, such as those based on Lyapunov theory, into rigorous, embedded analyses of the corresponding software implementations. CrAVES comes as a useful complement to current static software analysis methods, which it leverages to develop independent verification systems. Computers and computer programs used to manage documents and spreadsheets. They now also interact with physical artifacts (airplanes, power plants, automobile brakes and robotic surgeons), to create Cyber-Physical Systems. Software means complexity and bugs - bugs which can cause real tragedy, far beyond the frozen screens we associate with system crashes on our current PCs. Software autocoding is becoming the de facto recommended practice for many safety-critical applications. CrAVES aims to evolve this towards higher standards of quality and reduced design times and costs. Rigorous, mathematical arguments supporting safety-critical functionalities are the cornerstone of CrAVES. Collaborative programs involving high-school teachers will encourage the transmission of this message to STEM education in high-schools through university programs designed for that purpose.