Towards the verification of cyber-physical processes based on time and physical properties

Abstract

A cyber-physical process is a set of cyber and physical activities performed to accomplish a common goal in a given amount of time. The collaboration between cyber-physical processes describes the behaviour of networked cyber-physical systems (NCPS). NCPS have time-related and physical properties, which are crucial to the correctness of their execution. However, when we specify the collaboration between processes, some combination of their corresponding properties can be conflicting. This conflict renders the participating cyber-physical processes incompatible. We observe two types of problems: implicit time-related, and physical-related incompatibilities. In this paper, we propose a novel approach to verify the compatibility of cyber-physical processes with time-related and physical properties. We first define a set of constraints that allow the transformation of the NCPS model into a constraint satisfaction model. Then, we check the compatibility of the processes. Finally, we demonstrate the applicability and effectiveness of our approach through a case study.

Modelling and verifying time‐aware processes for cyber‐physical environments

“…This paper extends our earlier contributions presented in [3,10,15,16]. In [3,15], we proposed some extensions to BPMN 2.0 in order to consider a subset of CPS properties.…”

“…Wei et al,in [41], use probabilistic automata to model the dynamic behaviour of IoT services and analyse the reliability and the availability of resources of a collaborative behaviour. In CPS, formal techniques have also been applied to verify the deadlock, livelock [28] and safety [32] of a cyber-physical model [10]. However, there is a considerable lack of approaches covering both time-related and physical properties at the same time.…”

“…These conflicts render the participating cyber-physical processes incompatible. CPS compatibility is defined as the capability of processes to interact successfully, by exchanging messages and physical objects in the cyber and physical world while respecting all the defined properties [10]. In this paper, we propose a verification approach that automatically analyses both the consistency of each CPS process and their compatibility.…”

“…For example, the velocity can affect the arrival time of a flying drone. The physical properties are the constraints on the environment, physical entities, devices or their behaviour in CPS [6][7][8][9][10].…”

“…In [3,15], we proposed some extensions to BPMN 2.0 in order to consider a subset of CPS properties. The works proposed in [10,16] present a constraint satisfaction based model for CPS verification. This paper extends our earlier works as follows.…”