Start of funding 01.07.2008

Runtime Verification - From Aeronautics to Automotive

PD Dr. Martin Leucker
Technische Universität München

Dr. Klaus Havelund

Laboratory for Reliable Software



Runtime verification is a lightweight verification technique complementing traditional verification techniques such as model checking and testing. One of the main distinguishing features of runtime verification is due to its nature of being performed at runtime: This opens up the possibility not only to detect incorrect behavior of a software system but to react whenever misbehavior is encountered. The proposed research cooperation aims at extending the state-of-art of runtime verification and at extending the practical applicability of runtime verification techniques beyond the aeronautic sector to make it easily applicable for the embedded systems world as found for example in the automotive sector. Moreover, a long term collaboration in the field of runtime verification and related areas of TUM and NASA JPL should be established.

Final report:
The goal of the project was to get acquainted with the runtime verification techniques that have primarily been developed at NASA with the aim to apply them in the area of embedded systems. During a visit at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) we worked intensively together with Dr. Klaus Havelund both for getting a coherent picture of the current work and to enhance the current state of the art. We identified that a precise formal semantics for runtime verification is necessary.
Corresponding results are [1-3].

In 2011 Dr. Klaus Havelund and Dr. Martin Leucker offered a joint tutorial on the topic of runtime verification at the Conference Software Engineering and Formal Methods (SEFM'11, November 7-18, 2011, Montevideo, Uruguay).

In further discussions we realized that plain verification for embedded systems should be extended by diagnosis to allow the localization of errors on top of their detection. Therefore we applied for a Dagstuhl Seminar on the topic of runtime verification, diagnosis, planning and control for autonomous systems together with Martin Sachenbacher, Oleg Sokolsky, and Brian Williams which was subsequently accepted and held.

Refereneces:

[1] Bauer, Andreas, Leucker, Martin, and Schallhart, Christian. The good, the bad, and the ugly –but how ugly is ugly? Technical Report TUM-I0803, TU München, 2008.

[2] Dong, Wei, Leucker, Martin, and Schallhart, Christian. Impartial Anticipation in Runtime Verification. In Moonzoo Kim and Mahesh Viswanathan (editors), Proceedings of the 6th International Symposium on Automated Technology for Verification and Analysis (ATVA'08), volume 5311, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Springer, 2008.

[3] Leucker, Martin. Teaching Runtime Verification. Runtime Verification - Second International Conference, RV 2011, San Francisco, CA, USA, September 27-30, 2011, Revised Selected Papers, 2012.