SHF: Small: Automating Improvement of Development Environments for Cyber-Physical Systems (AIDE-CPS)

Vanderbilt University, Nashville TN

Investigators

Abstract

People and society depend on cyber physical systems in diverse domains from transportation systems, such as automotive and aerospace, to medical devices. Due to the safety-critical nature of these cyber-physical systems, their safe and reliable operation is essential. The reliable and correct operation of development tools used to design cyber-physical systems is also vital, since defects in development tools have the capability to culminate in defects in cyber-physical systems themselves. While extensive research efforts exist to address problems such as state-space explosion for models of cyber-physical systems, less effort has been invested in developing methods to ensure correctness of development environments for cyber-physical systems. The design and engineering process for cyber-physical systems (CPS) relies on numerous artifacts, model translation layers, programming languages, and development tools, which are often assumed to be correct but are in fact not. This project develops randomized differential testing and fuzzing methods to automatically find candidate defects in CPS development environments. The project investigates new formal methods and testing approaches to automate improvement of CPS development environments. This framework relies on three primary efforts: randomly generating CPS models, translating CPS models between different development tools, and comparing both dynamic and symbolic executions of CPS models. The framework increases confidence in the correctness of development environments which aids in realizing the societal benefits of cyber-physical systems.