Verification of Computer-Controlled Systems (VERICOCOS)
Contractor(s): GMV (ES), TAS (FR), SCISYS (UK)
ESA Budget: 500kE
YoC: 2017
Background and justification
Requirements are usually defined using natural language. This leads to bad requirements quality, changes in the specification, implementation errors, etc. The usage of modelling techniques for describing behavioral requirements allows improving the requirements definition. Apart from improving the correctness, completeness or coherency, analyses and checks may be performed at model level.
Objective(s)
- Confirm the applicability and subsequently open the door to the generalized use of state machines and sequence diagrams for the specification, design, verification and implementation of on-board software. Include support for Electronic Data Sheets (EDS)
- Produce a tool development framework and apply the tools on a space-representative case study ; provide training material
Achievements and status
The VERICOCOS study has produced a set of artifacts to enhance and promote the usage of models to represent the behaviour of computer-controlled systems. The main outcomes of the study are the following:
- Specification of the Space Industry user needs for behavioural modelling, including the derivation of tool requirements.
- Analysis of the state of art of both open-source and commercial Modelling Languages and Tools to model the behaviour of space systems.
- Development of a Modelling Tool Framework.
- Elaboration of Training Material.
Benefits
According to the project outcomes and the results extracted from the case studies, the usefulness of the behavioral modelling was sufficiently demonstrated. It can be concluded that this study was a successful first step towards an industrial behavioral modelling approach for computer-controlled systems.
Next steps
In the future tools have to be matured and complemented with automatic analysers (model checkers, automatic test generators, etc.) and promoted to projects to get feedback from operational users.
