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New Opportunities for Integrated Formal Methods This is a repository copy of New Opportunities for Integrated Formal Methods. White Rose Research Online URL for this paper: https://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/149059/ Version: Submitted Version Article: Gleirscher, Mario orcid.org/0000-0002-9445-6863, Foster, Simon orcid.org/0000-0002- 9889-9514 and Woodcock, Jim orcid.org/0000-0001-7955-2702 (2019) New Opportunities for Integrated Formal Methods. ACM Computing Surveys. 117. https://doi.org/10.1145/3357231 Reuse This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs (CC BY-NC-ND) licence. This licence only allows you to download this work and share it with others as long as you credit the authors, but you can’t change the article in any way or use it commercially. More information and the full terms of the licence here: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ Takedown If you consider content in White Rose Research Online to be in breach of UK law, please notify us by emailing [email protected] including the URL of the record and the reason for the withdrawal request. [email protected] https://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/ 1 New Opportunities for Integrated Formal Methods Mario Gleirscher, Simon Foster, Jim Woodcock University of York, United Kingdom Email: fi[email protected] Abstract—Formal methods have provided approaches for in- have been brought to bear include requirements engineer- vestigating software engineering fundamentals and also have high ing (e.g. [2]), architecture design, test-driven development, potential to improve current practices in dependability assurance. program synthesis, and testing, to name a few. The field of In this article, we summarise known strengths and weaknesses of formal methods. From the perspective of the assurance of robots formal methods was born and has been an active research and autonomous systems (RAS), we highlight new opportunities area for many decades. FMs have served as a powerful tool for integrated formal methods and identify threats to their for theoretical researchers and as a paradigm to be adopted adoption to be mitigated. Based on these opportunities and by practitioners and, hence, to be further investigated by threats, we develop an agenda for fundamental and empirical applied researchers. Applications of these methods showed research on integrated formal methods and for successful transfer of validated research to RAS assurance. Furthermore, we outline their strengths but also their weaknesses. our expectations on useful outcomes of such an agenda. Recently, we can observe this plethora of difficulties with robots and autonomous systems (RAS). Such systems are going Index Terms—Formal methods, strengths, weaknesses, op- portunities, threats, SWOT, challenges, integration, unification, to be more broadly deployed in society, therefore, increasing research agenda. their level of safety criticality [3]. Hence, their regulatory acceptance requires assurance cases with comprehensible and indefeasible safety arguments. However, assurance cases as- NOMENCLATURE sociated with standards like IEC 61508 and DO-178C can be (A)SIL (Automotive) Safety Integrity Level laborious to create, complicated to maintain and evolve, and DA Dependability Assurance must be rigorously checked by the evaluation process to ensure DSL Domain-Specific Language that all obligations are met and confidence in the arguments FI Formal Inspection FM Formal Method is achieved [4], [5]. iFM integrated Formal Method In spite of the weaknesses of current FMs, and encouraged MBD Model-Based Development by their strengths, we believe that the integration of formal MDE Model-Driven Engineering ML Machine Learning methods can reduce critical deficits observable in dependable QA Quality Assurance systems engineering. Farrell et al. [6] state that “there is RAS Robots and Autonomous Systems currently no general framework integrating formal methods for RE Requirements Engineering RCA Root Cause Analysis robotic systems.” The authors highlight the use of what are 1 SACM Structured Assurance Case Meta-Model called integrated formal methods (iFM) in the construction SMT Satisfiability Modulo Theory of assurance cases and the production of evidence as a key SWOT Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats UTP Unifying Theories of Programming opportunity to meet current RAS challenges. Particularly, machine-checked assurance cases can greatly increase confi- dence in the sufficiency of assurance cases, and also aid in I. INTRODUCTION arXiv:1812.10103v3 [cs.SE] 11 Jun 2019 their maintenance and evolution through modularisation of A plethora of difficulties in software practice and mo- arguments and evidence. Integration of formal methods, in mentous software faults have been continuously delivering particular modern virtual prototyping and hybrid verification reasons to believe that a significantly more rigorous disci- tools, can improve the automation of the evidence gathering pline of software engineering is needed. Researchers such as process, and highlight potential problems when an assurance Neumann [1] have collected plenty of anecdotal evidence on case changes. software-related risks substantiating this belief. In dependable systems engineering, researchers have turned A. Contribution this belief into one of their working hypotheses and contributed With this work, we investigate the potentials for the wider formalisms, techniques, and tools to increase the rigour in en- adoption of iFMs in dependable systems engineering, taking gineering workflows. Examples of activities where formalisms RAS as a recent opportunity for making progress with iFM research and for its successful transfer into practice. The first author of this work is funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemein- schaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) – GL 915/1-1/2. We carry through an analysis of strengths, weaknesses, c 2018. This manuscript version is made available under the CC-BY-NC-ND opportunities, and threats to the use of iFMs in the practical 4.0 license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. assurance of robots and autonomous systems. For this analysis, Reference Format: Gleirscher, M., Foster, S., & Woodcock, J.. New Oppor- tunities for Integrated Formal Methods (June 12, 2019). Unpublished working we surveyed literature on FM research transfer and application paper. Department of Computer Science, University of York, United Kingdom. arXiv:1812.10103 [cs.SE] 1We reuse the term from the homonymous conference series [7]. 2 Approach Empirical Research a variety of complex tasks in support of humans. We can consider such systems looking at four layers: the plant or Formal Methods applied and process composed of the operational environment and the investigated in machine; the machine itself; the machine’s controller, and the enhances Application software embedded into this controller. We treat “embedded integrated achieve wider Dependable Systems system” and “embedded software” as synonyms. Machine, Formal Methods adoption of Engineering controller, and software can be distributed. By dependable systems engineering, we refer to error- applied and specialises Fundamental Research investigated in avoidance and error-detection activities in control system and Assurance embedded software development (e.g. according to the V- of RAS model). Avizienis et al. [9] provide a comprehensive termi- nology and an overview of the assessment and handling of Fig. 1. RAS assurance as an opportunity for the wider adoption of iFMs in a variety of faults, errors, and failures. For critical systems, dependable systems practice such activities are expected to be explicit (e.g. traceable, documented), to employ best practices (e.g. design patterns), and on dependable systems engineering. Figure 1 depicts how and to be driven by reasonably qualified personnel (e.g. well- we deduce a research agenda for iFMs with a focus on RAS trained and experienced engineers or programmers). assurance from a research agenda for FMs in dependable In the applications we consider, the need for dependability systems engineering. arises from the embedding of software into a cyber-physical From the strengths, we see in recent research, and from the context (i.e., an electronic execution platform, a physical opportunities in current RAS assurance, we argue why RAS process to be controlled, other systems or human users to assurance—an instance of assurance in dependable systems interact with). Dependability assurance (DA, or assurance engineering (cf. Figure 1)—is a key opportunity for making for short) encompasses the usually cross-disciplinary task of substantial iFM research progress. Throughout this work, we providing evidence for an assurance case (e.g. safety, security, indicate how iFMs can meet typical challenges in dependabil- reliability) for a system in a specific operational context [10]. ity assurance that also apply to RAS assurance. By formal methods, we refer to the use of formal (i.e., math- From the weaknesses, we observe in recent research, and ematically precise and unambiguous) modelling languages to from the threats general FM research transfer is exposed to, describe system elements, such as software, hardware com- we derive the directions of foundational and empirical research ponents, and the environment, and to subject these models to to be taken to transfer iFMs to RAS assurance and use them analysis, the results of which are targeted at DA [11], [12]. to their maximum benefit. FMs always require the use of both formal syntax and formal Our analysis 1)
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