Formal Modelling of Safety-Critical Interactive Devices Using Coloured Petri Nets

Abstract

Our research team is specialized in human-computer systems and their engineering, with focus on interactive software systems for aeronautics (from cockpits to control towers). This context stands out by the need for certification, such as DO-178 or ED-12. Today, formal methods are pushed forward, as one of the best tools to achieve the verification and validation of properties, leading to the certification of these systems. Interactive systems are reactive computer systems that process information from their environment and produce a representation of their internal state. They offer new rich interfaces with sophisticated interactions. Their certification is a challenge, because the validation is often a human based process since traditional formal tools are not always suitable to the verification of graphical properties in particular. In this paper, we explore the scientific work that has been done in formal methods for interactive systems over the last decade, in a systematic study of publications in the International Workshop on Formal Methods for Interactive Systems. We describe an analytical framework that we apply to classify the studied work into classes of properties and used formalisms. We then discuss the emerging findings, mainly the lack of papers addressing the formal specification or validation of perceptibility properties. We conclude with an overview of our future work in this area.

A Coloured Petri Net Approach to Model and Analyze Safety-Critical Interactive Systems

“…We start with describing a process [23] to model user interface using Coloured Petri Nets with the help of simple infusion pump example as shown in Figure 1. For modelling a user interface of an interactive system, three things that needs consideration are: firstly, all the widgets that a system have, secondly, the category of these widgets, i.e., deciding if the widget is just a responder which displays messages or the widget is actually doing some action etc., and thirdly what type of behaviours are associated with these widgets, i.e., functions that are executed when the widget is interacted with.…”