Automata Learning in Generation of Scenario-Based Requirements in System Development
information technology and software
Automata Learning in Generation of Scenario-Based Requirements in System Development (GSC-TOPS-71)
A technique for fully tractable code generation from requirements
Overview
NASA sensor networks can be highly distributed autonomous systems of systems that must operate with a high degree of reliability. The solar system and planetary exploration networks necessarily experience long communications delays with Earth. The exploration networks are partly and occasionally out of touch with the Earth and mission control for long periods of time, and must operate under extremes of dynamic environmental conditions. Due to the complexity of these systems as well as the distributed and parallel nature of the exploration networks, the exploration networks have an extremely large state space and are impossible to test completely using traditional testing techniques. The more code or instructions that can be generated automatically from a verifiably correct model, the less likely that human developers will introduce errors.
The Technology
In addition, the higher the level of abstraction that developers can work from, as is afforded through the use of scenarios to describe system behavior, the less likely that a mismatch will occur between requirements and implementation and the more likely that the system can be validated. Working from a higher level of abstraction also provides that errors in the system are more easily caught, since developers can more easily see the big picture of the system.
This technology is a technique for fully tractable code generation from requirements, which has an application in other areas such as generation and verification of scripts and procedures, generation and verification of policies for autonomic systems, and may have future applications in the areas of security and software safety. The approach accepts requirements expressed as a set of scenarios and converts them to a process based description. The more complete the set of scenarios, the better the quality of the process based description that is generated. The proposed technology using automata learning to generate possible additional scenarios can be useful in completing the description of the requirements.
Benefits
- The medium reduces partiality of system requirement specifications, system development time and the amount of testing required of a new system
- The medium allows translating the scenario of the system to a script, without the use of an automated inference engine
Applications
- Satellites
- Software Systems
- Sensors
- Robotic Operations
- Spacecraft
- Artificial Intelligence
