I-Corps: VeriSight CPS: Enhancing the Design and Operation of Cyber-Physical Systems with Verified Insight

University Of California-Berkeley, Berkeley CA

Investigators

Abstract

Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) tightly integrate computation with physical processes. Examples include modern automobiles, medical devices, toys, drones, robots, smart thermostat and HVAC systems and many more. The commercial potential of these systems has been recognized with the growing buzz around the "Internet of Things (IoT)." As the design of CPS/IoT systems goes mainstream, from a research, hobbyist, and niche industrial activity to a mainstream, large-scale industry, the design challenges are mounting. A primary challenge is to help designers and users gain better insight into their systems: what behaviors the systems must and must not have, why they exhibit certain desired/undesired behaviors, and how to design and implement them to achieve desired behavior. This project proposes to create a software toolkit, VeriSight CPS, and investigate its capabilities to meet this challenge. VeriSight can be used to answer queries about a system at various phases of the design and operation of a system. Industrial impact of the VeriSight toolkit is anticipated in several areas, including transportation, robotics, and medical devices. The technical goals of this project are to develop a software toolkit to assist in the specification, design, verification, debugging,optimization, and maintenance of cyber-physical systems, and to investigate its effectiveness in a focused set of applications of high impact. The underlying theory is a novel blend of formal methods for design automation and machine learning. Unlike mainstream machine learning and data analytics techniques, VeriSight CPS involves the use of verification technology to analyze models and to answer queries. The envisioned contributions of the project include a general software architecture for VeriSight CPS applicable to multiple application domains, the investigation of various user interaction models, and an exploration of industrial applications in key CPS domains including transportation, medical devices, and robotics. A key part of this Innovation Corps (I-Corps) project will be to interview potential customers, e.g., those from the categories listed above, and determine which options will be the most fruitful.