H-Astral and Its Use in the Development of Real-Time Control Systems

Abstract

An important issue in the design and implementation of real-time control software is the verification of (time continuous) properties during system development such that even in early stages of the development adequate feedback on design decisions can be given. It is beyond any doubt that formal methods play an important role in this kind of verification. Our research of the past few years focused on applying formalisms in requirements specification and in developing tools for modeling, design and verification of specifications for real-time systems. The development approach builds upon requirements specifications constructed using the formal real-time specification language Astral. In this paper we discuss issues in the use of Astral in development and verification of real-time control systems and give an example of its use.