Comparing formal tools for system design

Formal Methods for Industrial Critical Systems

Pol

2020

Self Cite

Organised to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the FMICS international conference, the present survey addresses 30 questions on the past, present, and future of formal methods in research, industry, and education. Not less than 130 high-profile experts in formal methods (among whom three Turing award winners and many recipients of other prizes and distinctions) accepted to participate in this survey. We analyse their answers and comments, and present a collection of 111 position statements provided by these experts. The survey is both an exercise in collective thinking and a family picture of key actors in formal methods.

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The 2020 Expert Survey on Formal Methods

Garavel

Formal Methods for Industrial Critical Systems

Pol

2020

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“…We did have experience in modelling and analysing railway case studies with Uppaal SMC [6,8,31]. The original model developed in [8] and statistically model checked had to be simplified considerably (cf.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…1. ERTMS Level 3 moving block railway signalling (adapted from [8,31]) location to the radio block centre. Upon receiving a train's location, the radio block centre sends a MA to the onboard unit (together with speed restrictions and route configurations), indicating the space the train can safely travel based on the safety distance with preceding trains.…”

Section: Context and Case Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Next generation railway systems are based on distributed inter-organisational entities, such as on-board train computers and wayside radio-block centres and satellites, which have to interact to accomplish their tasks. A longstanding effort in the railway domain concerns the use of formal methods and tools for the analysis of railway (signalling) systems in light of the sector's stringent safety requirements [7,10,11,17,[27][28][29][30][31]41,42]. Due to their distributed and interorganisational nature, their formal verification is still an open challenge.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Strategy Synthesis for Autonomous Driving in a Moving Block Railway System with Uppaal Stratego

Basile

Formal Techniques for Distributed Objects, Components, and Systems

Legay

2020

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Moving block railway systems are the next generation signalling systems currently under development as part of the Shift2Rail European initiative, including autonomous driving technologies. In this paper, we model a suitable abstraction of a moving block signalling system with autonomous driving as a stochastic priced timed game. We then synthesise safe and optimal driving strategies for the model by applying advanced techniques that combine statistical model checking with reinforcement learning as provided by Uppaal Stratego. Hence, we show the applicability of Uppaal Stratego in this concrete case study.

“…Surveys on formal methods in industry, including railways, have already appeared in the literature. Some focus on providing personal overviews of past experiences [2,3,40] or on collecting viewpoints of experts [71,74]; others target the railway ield speciically, with questionnaires [12,13], discussion of future challenges [24,60], and comparison of tools in the domain [17,65,66,100]. However, despite the interest of the industry and research communities, there is no systematic study aimed at collecting and analyzing the existing literature in formal methods for railways to provide a framework to move forward in research and practice.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Formal Methods in Railways: A Systematic Mapping Study

Ferrari¹,

2022

ACM Comput. Surv.

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Formal methods are mathematically based techniques for the rigorous development of software-intensive systems. The railway signaling domain is a field in which formal methods have traditionally been applied, with several success stories. This article reports on a mapping study that surveys the landscape of research on applications of formal methods to the development of railway systems. Following the guidelines of systematic reviews, we identify 328 relevant primary studies, and extract information about their demographics, the characteristics of formal methods used and railway-specific aspects. Our main results are as follows: (i) we identify a total of 328 primary studies relevant to our scope published between 1989 and 2020, of which 44% published during the last 5 years and 24% involving industry; (ii) the majority of studies are evaluated through Examples (41%) and Experience Reports (38%), while full-fledged Case Studies are limited (1.5%); (iii) Model checking is the most commonly adopted technique (47%), followed by simulation (27%) and theorem proving (19.5%); (iv) the dominant languages are UML (18%) and B (15%), while frequently used tools are ProB (9%), NuSMV (8%) and UPPAAL (7%); however, a diverse landscape of languages and tools is employed; (v) the majority of systems are interlocking products (40%), followed by models of high-level control logic (27%); (vi) most of the studies focus on the Architecture (66%) and Detailed Design (45%) development phases. Based on these findings, we highlight current research gaps and expected actions. In particular, the need to focus on more empirically sound research methods, such as Case Studies and Controlled Experiments, and to lower the degree of abstraction, by applying formal methods and tools to development phases that are closer to software development. Our study contributes with an empirically based perspective on the future of research and practice in formal methods applications for railways. It can be used by formal methods researchers to better focus their scientific inquiries, and by railway practitioners for an improved understanding of the interplay between formal methods and their specific application domain.