Systematic Development of Control Designs via Formal Refinement

Abstract

Abstract:The Simulink/Stateflow (SL/SF) modeling framework is widely used in industry for the development of control applications. However, such models are not amenable to formal reasoning. Controllers can also be designed using formal specification languages. Such designs can be formally verified, but the models do not explicitly represent control or data flow information. In this paper, we discuss RRM diagrams (RRMDs), a new modelling notation which incorporates the benefits of these two formalisms. RRMDs are graphical formal models and they also support incremental formal development. We have used synchronising state machines to encode RRMDs. We have also developed a prototype tool which translates RRMDs automatically to SL/SF designs.