Towards a formalism-based toolkit for automotive applications

Abstract

The success of a number of projects has been shown to be significantly improved by the use of a formalism . However, there remains an open issue: to what extent can a development process based on a singular formal notation and method succeed. The majority of approaches demonstrate a low level of flexibility by attempting to use a single notation to express all of the different aspects encountered in software development. Often, these approaches leave a number of scalability issues open. We prefer a more eclectic approach. In our experience, the use of a formalism-based toolkit with adequate notations for each development phase is a viable solution. Following this principle, any specific notation is used only where and when it is really suitable and not necessarily over the entire software lifecycle. The approach explored in this article is perhaps slowly emerging in practice -we hope to accelerate its adoption. However, the major challenge is still finding the best way to instantiate it for each specific application scenario. In this work, we describe a development process and method for automotive applications which consists of five phases. The process recognizes the need for having adequate (and tailored) notations (Problem Frames, Requirements State Machine Language, and Event-B) for each development phase as well as direct traceability between the documents produced during each phase. This allows for a stepwise verification/validation of the system under development. The ideas for the formal development method have evolved over two significant case studies carried out in the DEPLOY project.

Hikester - The Event Management Application

“…There are several other features to be implemented in future, but now the mobile applications and the Location-Based Recommender System are the top priority tasks. It is particularly interesting to understand how the intelligent service provided by Hikester can be integrated with other intelligent system that we are investigating, for example in the field of smart buildings [18,19] or in the automotive sector [20], either for recreational purposes or for assistance to people in need [21].…”

Gene Expression for Simulation of Biological Tissue

“…Computer simulations of biological tissue dynamics can serve the purpose of understanding diseases and dysfunction at the operational and suboperational level as well as being the effective substitute for drug testing that does not involve living beings. At the same time, potential application scenarios are also foreseeable in cognitive architecture [27], where simulations may provide insight into and, in general, for the development of smart systems, including smart houses [28]- [30] and smart automotive systems [31].…”

Jolie Static Type Checker: a Prototype

“…The plan is to use the Jolie programming language and the type checker as a basis for the development of future research projects, the same way was done in [29] and [30]. Potential application scenarios are cognitive architecture [32], automotive systems [8] and smart houses [23].…”

“…This is necessary since it is not possible to predict what branch will be executed at runtime 7 . The full implementation is available on Github 8 . In Figure 2 we show the Java fragment that builds the corresponding SMT statement.…”