Formal methods reality check: industrial usage

Based on a systematic survey and analysis of the use of formal methods in the development of a dozen industrial applications, we summarize the methods being used, characterize the styles of industrial usage, and provide recommendations for evolutionary enhancements to the technology base of formal methods.

This volume contains the proceedings of the First International Workshop of Formal Techniques for Safety-Critical Systems (FTSCS 2012), held in Kyoto on November 12, 2012, as a satellite event of the ICFEM conference. The aim of this workshop is to bring together researchers and engineers interested in the application of (semi-)formal methods to improve the quality of safety-critical computer systems. FTSCS is particularly interested in industrial applications of formal methods. Topics include: - the use of formal methods for safety-critical and QoS-critical systems, including avionics, automotive, and medical systems; - methods, techniques and tools to support automated analysis, certification, debugging, etc.; - analysis methods that address the limitations of formal methods in industry; - formal analysis support for modeling languages used in industry, such as AADL, Ptolemy, SysML, SCADE, Modelica, etc.; and - code generation from validated models. The workshop received 25 submissions; 21 of these were regular papers and 4 were tool/work-in-progress/position papers. Each submission was reviewed by three referees; based on the reviews and extensive discussions, the program committee selected nine regular papers, which are included in this volume. Our program also included an invited talk by Ralf Huuck.

In order to improve the pointing accuracy of a small satellite, the attitude control system is controlled with pitch-axis momentum and three-axis magnetic torquerods. The satellite dynamics equation and kinematic equation are built with the method of quaternion. For each of the three body axes, well-known PD control torque equations are adopted. Three position, three rate, and a dumping control gains are optimally found by building up the optimal attitude control model. In the model, two single objectives: the minimum of the transient time and the minimum of the sum of both the square sum of the attitude angle error and the square sum of the angle rate error are integrated into the multi objectives with multiobjective optimization method. The constraints require that the attitude angle, the angle rate, the three-axis dipole moment and the pitch wheel momentum should not exceed the required value. Finally, an application to the attitude control of a small satellite is presented as an example. Results show that the optimal control algorithm is feasible, effective, and reliable, and attitude control performance is also significantly improved after optimization, compared to the traditional PD control.

We consider problems of synthesis of the vector spline guidance laws and digital attitude control of a maneuvering land-survey satellite. We have presented the results on the efficiency of the developed algorithms.

The use of formal methods for real-time system provides an analysis and a validation of the accomplished specifications, however, the complexity encumbers their interest in the industrial developments. This causes a gap between the real needs of the practical users (industrial) and the scientific community. The design based on components emerges as a design technique to reduce the complexity and the validation process of software development. Moreover, in the real-time system design where the object oriented design has demonstrate its validity, the use of predefined components can strongly improve and reduce the design, implementation and validation phases. In this paper we present an tool to design real-time control systems from a set of specific components. The tool provides a graphical interface to define component levels. Each component has associated a High Level Time Petri Net and an Ada code which are composed to build a prototype and a design specification.KeywordsGraphical InterfaceCoordination MechanismPeriodic TaskSporadic TaskInput PlaceThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

Flywheel energy storage technology is a new and efficient energy conversion and storage method. The high-speed rotating flywheel is used to store mechanical energy, and the energy conversion between the electrical energy and the mechanical energy is realized by the transducer device. In a long-life, high-precision, high-stability three-axis attitude-stabilized satellite, the flywheel is an important and essential execution component. The double flywheel satellite system refers to a three-axis attitude satellite system with two flywheels on each of the three axes. Due to the complexity of the three-axis two-way flywheel energy storage attitude control system, it is impossible to accurately establish a mathematical model, which brings a lot of inconvenience to satellite attitude control. In recent years, intelligent control theory has been widely used in complex systems and has shown quite good control effects. The energy storage attitude control dual-purpose flywheel will disturb the attitude control of the satellite during energy feedback. In this paper, fuzzy logic control is used and the fuzzy controller of the current distributor of the flywheel energy storage system in energy feedback is designed by using MATLAB fuzzy logic toolbox. The fuzzy logic controller does not depend on the mathematical model of the object, and has excellent robustness. It has a good effect on the attitude control of the flywheel energy storage satellite in the energy feedback state.

H∞ control option for a combined energy and attitude control system

Article Free Access Share on The impact of architectural trends on operating system performance Authors: M. Rosenblum Computer Systems Laboratory, Stanford University, Stanford CA Computer Systems Laboratory, Stanford University, Stanford CAView Profile , E. Bugnion Computer Systems Laboratory, Stanford University, Stanford CA Computer Systems Laboratory, Stanford University, Stanford CAView Profile , S. A. Herrod Computer Systems Laboratory, Stanford University, Stanford CA Computer Systems Laboratory, Stanford University, Stanford CAView Profile , E. Witchel Computer Systems Laboratory, Stanford University, Stanford CA Computer Systems Laboratory, Stanford University, Stanford CAView Profile , A. Gupta Computer Systems Laboratory, Stanford University, Stanford CA Computer Systems Laboratory, Stanford University, Stanford CAView Profile Authors Info & Claims SOSP '95: Proceedings of the fifteenth ACM symposium on Operating systems principlesDecember 1995Pages 285–298https://doi.org/10.1145/224056.224078Published:03 December 1995Publication History 188citation2,012DownloadsMetricsTotal Citations188Total Downloads2,012Last 12 Months295Last 6 weeks50 Get Citation AlertsNew Citation Alert added!This alert has been successfully added and will be sent to:You will be notified whenever a record that you have chosen has been cited.To manage your alert preferences, click on the button below.Manage my AlertsNew Citation Alert!Please log in to your account Save to BinderSave to BinderCreate a New BinderNameCancelCreateExport CitationPublisher SiteeReaderPDF

Given the strict legal frameworks which regulate the movements and management of funds, building financial applications typically proves to be prohibitively expensive for small companies. Not only is it the case that understanding legal requirements and building a framework of compliance checks to ensure that such legislation is adhered to is a complex process, but also, service providers such as banks require certification and reporting before they are willing to take on the risks associated with the adoption of applications from small application developers. In this paper, we propose a solution which provides a centralised Open Payments Ecosystem which supports compliance checking and allows for the matching of financial applications with service providers and programme managers, automatically providing risk analysis and reporting. The solution proposed combines static and dynamic verification in a real-life use case, which can shed new insights on the use of formal methods on large complex systems. We also report on the software engineering challenges encountered when analysing formal requirements arising from the needs of compliance to applicable legislation.

The paper shows the outlines of the SLAM system that allows for an effective use of Formal Methods (FM) in Rapid Application Development (RAD) and other prototyping processes. The SLAM system, includes an expressive object oriented specification language and a development environment that, among other features, is able to generate efficient and readable code in a high level object oriented language (Java, C++, ...). SLAM is able to generate prototypes that can be used to validate the requirements with the user. The additional advantage is that the prototype is not throw-away because most part of the generated code can be directly used and the other part can be optimised with the additional help of assertions automatically included.

Nitrous oxide is a monopropellant with potential for use in propulsion systems for orbit correction, positioning and attitude control of satellites. This paper presents experimental results with a 2N thruster prototype employing nitrous oxide gas decomposed by a rhodium oxide catalyst supported on alumina. Initially, the thruster design, the test bench and test procedures are described. Then the main experimental results, including thrust curves, mass flow rates, pressures and temperatures along the thruster are presented for pulsed operation. At the end specific impulses, characteristic velocities and thruster efficiencies are determined, thus indicating a catalytic decomposition efficiency of about 88%.

N2O, as a green propellant alternative to N2H4, shows potential application in satellite propulsion system. The state of Ir species and the reaction behaviors on Ir/Al2O3 in the oxidative environment during N2O decomposition were identified here. Two types of Ir sites existed in this catalyst and affected the process of N2O decomposition. The strong Ir sites facilitated the dissociative adsorption of N2O to form N2 and adsorbed O atoms with adsorption heat of as high as 281 kJ/mol, which promoted the desorption of adsorbed O atoms and favored the self‐sustaining decomposition of N2O by raising the catalyst bed temperature. The other Ir sites interacted weakly with O atoms but facilitated their combination to form O2. The Ir/Al2O3 catalyst then exhibited an excellent performance in initiating the decomposition of N2O at low temperature of 200°C and good stability in 0.1 N microthruster for orbit adjustment and attitude control of satellite. © 2016 American Institute of Chemical Engineers AIChE J, 62: 3973–3981, 2016

Attitude and deformation coupled estimation of flexible satellite using low-cost sensors

This paper discusses the concept and development of a small Stirling-cycle mechanical refrigerator integrated with a phase-change substance (methanol) for cooling a space borne atmospheric gravity wave imager. A system employing this concept, called ICE (Integrated Cooler Experiment), is proposed to fly on COOLSAT (Cryogenic fluid management, Oxygen nightglow, Orbital attitude control, Low-cost cooler Science And Technology). COOLSAT is a proposed satellite by Utah State University for the USRA STEDI (STudent Explorer Demonstration Initiative) pilot mission.

The proliferation of MPP's has made it very difficult for users to accurately assess which machine is best for a specific user application. Simply testing one or more kernels on a new machine is insufficient since slight program modifications can produce large variations in performance and thus could lead users to erroneous conclusions about the performance of the entire application. Most industrial applications are far too large to be easily or quickly benchmarked. Although there are many benchmark suites, can performance with any of those accurately predict performance for a specific industrial application? This is the dilemma potential MPP users face. The panel members have had extensive benchmarking experience. Topics to be discussed include: assessing MPP performance for scientific, engineering, and/or commercial data processing applications (including database and transactions processing); limitations of existing benchmark suites and performance metrics; guidelines to assess MPP performance.