Formal Methods for Safe Design of Autonomous Systems Dedicated to Risk Management

Abstract

A new generation of Autonomous systems (UAVs, ROVERs, etc.) is coming that will help improve the situational awareness and assessment, especially in difficult conditions like disasters. Rescuers should be relieved from time-consuming data collection tasks as much as possible and at the same time, Autonomous systems should assist data collection through a more insightful and automated guidance thanks to advanced sensing capabilities. In order to achieve this vision, two challenges must be addressed though. The first one is to achieve a sufficient autonomy. The second one relates to the reliability with respect to accidental (safety) or even malicious (security) risks. This however requires the design of new embedded architectures to be more autonomous, while mitigating the harm they may potentially cause. Increased complexity and flexibility requires resorting to modelling, simulation and formal verification techniques in order to validate such critical aspects.

Formal Methods for Railway Disasters Prevention

“…Moreover, the implementation of computer-based systems is mostly constrained by the cost of their development because that implies to be able to prove their Safety Integrity level (SIL). In fact, meeting the requirements of standards such as EN50128 [6] in terms of resources, organization and development cycles can be difficult and expensive because it imposes, at each stage, a quantity of documents (specifications, plans…), verifications and tests, carried out by independent teams. Furthermore, the software maintainability can hardly reach the safety relay's which is ensured by the endurance of the equipment.…”

“…Formal methods are useful mathematical techniques for modelling complex system designed on a logical reasoning because they provide a verification of the consistency and the validity of this reasoning [6], through proof of properties which requires a precise statement of system's properties. This constraint is the opportunity for the designers to unambiguously specify the essential requirements of the system.…”