Semantic Translation of Simulink Diagrams to Input/Output Extended Finite Automata

Abstract

We develop a semantic translation approach for Simulink diagrams. Simulink is a graphical tool for representing and simulating dynamical systems. We propose a recursive approach for translating a class of Simulink diagrams to input/ output-extended finite automata (I/O-EFA). An I/O-EFA model of a Simulink diagram can be used for further analysis such as test generation and formal verification. We show that the translation approach is sound and complete: The input-stateoutput behavior of an I/O-EFA model, as defined in terms of a step-trajectory, preserves the input-state-output behavior of the corresponding Simulink diagram at each sample time (assuming the same integration method for any of the continuous blocks with dynamics).

Mining requirements from closed-loop control models

“…In [10], the authors verify simple safety properties using sensitivity analysis. Other approaches try to transform Simulink diagrams into models amenable to formal verification [31,34]. When successful, such approaches provide very strong guarantees.…”

Relationship between Simulink and Petri Nets

“…So it is not clear how a Simulink model can be incorporated into a formal framework. Many attempts have been made to address this shortcoming by proposing translations of Simulink models into existing formal frameworks [1,8,14,13,16]. However, most of these proposals restrict themselves to a subset of Simulink features and do not formally capture the behavior of a simulation run in Simulink.…”

Reduction of automated test generation for Simulink/Stateflow to reachability and its novel resolution

“…In our previous paper [8], we derive the test suite based on our recursive and automated translation method from Simulink/Stateflow to an Input-Output Extended Finite Automata (I/O-EFA) (see [9], [10]), which preserves the behaviors observed at sampling instances. Each path from initial to final location in the I/O-EFA, corresponds to one possible computation step of the Simulink/Stateflow, and to execute this computation step, some other computation steps may need to be executed first.…”

“…In our prior works [9] [10], we modeled a Simulink/Stateflow diagram as an Input/Output Extended Finite Automaton (I/O-EFA) model preserving its discrete behaviors. In this paper we reduce the test generation problem to the reachability in a discrete-time Input/Output Hybrid Automaton (I/O-HA) model, which is more general than an I/O-EFA model, and is defined as follows.…”

“…The saturation block limits the value of y5 in the range between −0.5 and 100000. The translated I/O-EFA P using the method of [9] is shown in Fig. 2.…”