Adoption Of Formal Methods Research Articles

Automatically Learning Formal Models from Autonomous Driving Software

The correctness of autonomous driving software is of utmost importance, as incorrect behavior may have catastrophic consequences. Formal model-based engineering techniques can help guarantee correctness and thereby allow the safe deployment of autonomous vehicles. However, challenges exist for widespread industrial adoption of formal methods. One of these challenges is the model construction problem. Manual construction of formal models is time-consuming, error-prone, and intractable for large systems. Automating model construction would be a big step towards widespread industrial adoption of formal methods for system development, re-engineering, and reverse engineering. This article applies active learning techniques to obtain formal models of an existing (under development) autonomous driving software module implemented in MATLAB. This demonstrates the feasibility of automated learning for automotive industrial use. Additionally, practical challenges in applying automata learning, and possible directions for integrating automata learning into the automotive software development workflow, are discussed.

Automatic PI-RADS assignment by means of formal methods.

The Prostate Imaging Reporting and Data System (PI-RADS) version 2 emerged as standard in prostate magnetic resonance imaging examination. The Pi-RADS scores are assigned by radiologists and indicate the likelihood of a clinically significant cancer. The aim of this paper is to propose a methodology to automatically mark a magnetic resonance imaging with its related PI-RADS. We collected a dataset from two different institutions composed by DWI ADC MRI for 91 patients marked by expert radiologists with different PI-RADS score. A formal model is generated starting from a prostate magnetic resonance imaging, and a set of properties related to the different PI-RADS scores are formulated with the help of expert radiologists and pathologists. Our methodology relies on the adoption of formal methods and radiomic features, and in the experimental analysis, we obtain a specificity and sensitivity equal to 1. The proposed methodology is able to assign the PI-RADS score by analyzing prostate magnetic resonance imaging with a very high accuracy.

Formal Methods in Information Security

Formal methods use mathematical models for analysis and verification at any part of the program life-cycle. The use of formal methods is admitted, recommended, and sometimes prescribed in safety-and security-related standards dealing, e.g., with avionics, railways, nuclear energy, and secure information systems. This paper describes the state of the art in the industrial use of formal methods ininformation security with a focus on verification of security protocols. Given the vast scope of available solutions, attention has been focused just on the most popular and most representative ones, without exhaustiveness claims. We describe some of the highlights of our survey by presenting a series of industrial projects, and we draw some observations from these surveys and records of experience. Based on this, we discuss issues surrounding the industrial adoption of formal methods in security protocol engineering.

Formal Interpretation of Assertion Based Features on AMS Designs

The paper proposes the adoption of formal methods for modeling of analog functions. It explains how assertions can be overlaid onto the range of values of individual features in an analog function, and proceeds toward building a mathematical (hybrid automata) model to represent and analyze them. An LDO regulator and a battery charger are used as examples.