Towards Mixed-Reality in Software Engineering of Safety-Critical Systems

Abstract

Software engineering safety-critical systems exact a high cost because of the required system reliability. Safety-critical systems are characterized by the resulting harm or loss of life should such unanticipated system failure occur. This demand for high reliability has fostered the application of various approaches towards realizing this system reliability. Some of these approaches include model-driven development methodologies, application domain profile modeling, formal specification techniques, and various rigorous testing techniques. Software engineering researchers seek new and innovative techniques towards increasing safety-critical systems development. One emerging technique that may provide new prospects for developing highly reliable safety-critical software systems is that of mixed-reality, which is a combination of virtual and augmented realities. In this report a framework for the use of mixed-reality in safety-critical software system development is presented. This proposed mixed-reality software engineering methodology incorporates model-driven techniques along with formal specification techniques and builds on prior work in defining a model-driven software development methodology.