Computer Games as Virtual Environments for Safety-Critical Software Validation

Computer games became an inseparable part of everyday life in modern society and the time people spend playing them every day is increasing. This trend caused a noticeable research activity focused on utilizing the time spent playing in a meaningful way, for example to help solving scientific problems or tasks related to computer systems development. In this paper we present one contribution to this activity, a software system consisting of a modified version of the Open Rails train simulator and an application called TS2JavaConn, which allows to use separately developed software controllers with the simulator. The system is intended for validation of controllers developed by formal methods. The paper describes the overall architecture of the system and operation of its components. It also compares the system with other approaches to purposeful utilization of computer games, specifies suitable formal methods and illustrates its intended use on an example

A Joint Development of Coloured Petri Nets and the B Method in Critical Systems

Model transformation is an interesting task, which could take advantage of several modelling languages, and meanwhile should respect all the safety requirements. The presented work studies the translation from a valid design solution to a valid implementation, which is a mapping method from coloured Petri nets to abstract B machines. Both modelling languages are well known formal methods in the context of safety requirement engineering. The Petri nets are widely accepted by French railway engineers because of a fine graphic representation and their dynamic analysis properties. The B machine offers verified software development based on B language, which has already been applied in some safety-critical systems. The proposed model translation technique will help to bridge the gap between these two formal methods. This paper shows the systematic process of the translation, which is also illustrated by several case studies. The limitations and future efforts are discussed at the end of the paper