Graphical Animations of State Machines

Abstract

Systems verification with interactive theorem proving (ITP) is a promising technology that could make software reliable, although it is necessary to utilize many other technologies, such as testing, so as to make software really reliable. Lemma conjecture is one of the most intellectual activities in ITP. While we were performing systems verification with ITP, we happened to find out some state patterns in which the reachable states of a state machine are classified and conjectured several useful lemmas from the state patterns to complete the formal verification. It would be very useful to make it possible to obtain such state patterns of a given state machine with a reasonable amount of efforts. This research utilizes human beings' ability to recognize patterns in various kinds of data, such as graphical animations. The research aims at designing and implementing a state machine graphical animation tool and confirming that human beings can recognize state patterns in state machine graphical animations.