Sudden drop of fractal dimension of electromagnetic emissions recorded prior to significant earthquake

The variation of fractal dimension and entropy during a damage evolution process, especially approaching critical failure, has been recently investigated. A sudden drop of fractal dimension has been proposed as a quantitative indicator of damage localization or a likely precursor of an impending catastrophic failure. In this contribution, electromagnetic emissions recorded prior to significant earthquake are analysed to investigate whether they also present such sudden fractal dimension and entropy drops as the main catastrophic event is approaching. The pre-earthquake electromagnetic time series analysis results reveal a good agreement to the theoretically expected ones indicating that the critical fracture is approaching

Test Case Purification for Improving Fault Localization

Finding and fixing bugs are time-consuming activities in software development. Spectrum-based fault localization aims to identify the faulty position in source code based on the execution trace of test cases. Failing test cases and their assertions form test oracles for the failing behavior of the system under analysis. In this paper, we propose a novel concept of spectrum driven test case purification for improving fault localization. The goal of test case purification is to separate existing test cases into small fractions (called purified test cases) and to enhance the test oracles to further localize faults. Combining with an original fault localization technique (e.g., Tarantula), test case purification results in better ranking the program statements. Our experiments on 1800 faults in six open-source Java programs show that test case purification can effectively improve existing fault localization techniques

A Review of Fault Diagnosing Methods in Power Transmission Systems

Transient stability is important in power systems. Disturbances like faults need to be segregated to restore transient stability. A comprehensive review of fault diagnosing methods in the power transmission system is presented in this paper. Typically, voltage and current samples are deployed for analysis. Three tasks/topics; fault detection, classification, and location are presented separately to convey a more logical and comprehensive understanding of the concepts. Feature extractions, transformations with dimensionality reduction methods are discussed. Fault classification and location techniques largely use artificial intelligence (AI) and signal processing methods. After the discussion of overall methods and concepts, advancements and future aspects are discussed. Generalized strengths and weaknesses of different AI and machine learning-based algorithms are assessed. A comparison of different fault detection, classification, and location methods is also presented considering features, inputs, complexity, system used and results. This paper may serve as a guideline for the researchers to understand different methods and techniques in this field

Assessing the Effectiveness of Defect Prediction-based Test Suites at Localizing Faults

Debugging a software program constitutes a significant and laborious task for programmers, often consuming a substantial amount of time. The need to identify faulty lines of code further compounds this challenge, leading to decreased overall productivity. Consequently, the development of automated tools for fault detection becomes imperative to streamline the debugging process and enhance programmer productivity. In recent years, the field of automatic test generation has witnessed remarkable advancements, significantly improving the efficacy of automatic tests in detecting faults. The localization of faults can be further optimized through the utilization of such sophisticated tools. This dissertation aims to conduct an experimental study that assembles specialized automatic test generation tools designed to detect faults by estimating the likelihood of code being faulty. These tools will be compared against each other to discern their relative performance and effectiveness. Additionally, the study will comprehensively compare developer-generated tests with automatically generated tests to evaluate their respective aptitude for fault detection. Through this investigation, we seek to identify the most effective automated test generation tool while providing valuable insights into the relative merits of developer-generated and automatically generated tests for fault detection

A kernel density estimate-based approach to component goodness modeling

Intermittent fault localization approaches account for the fact that faulty components may fail intermittently by considering a parameter (known as goodness) that quantifies the probability that faulty components may still exhibit correct behavior. Current, state-of-the-art approaches (1) assume that this goodness probability is context independent and (2) do not provide means for integrating past diagnosis experience in the diagnostic mechanism. In this paper, we present a novel approach, coined Non-linear Feedback-based Goodness Estimate (NFGE), that uses kernel density estimations (KDE) to address such limitations. We evaluated the approach with both synthetic and real data, yielding lower estimation errors, thus increasing the diagnosis performance

Formal Analysis and Redesign of a Neural Network-Based Aircraft Taxiing System with VerifAI

We demonstrate a unified approach to rigorous design of safety-critical autonomous systems using the VerifAI toolkit for formal analysis of AI-based systems. VerifAI provides an integrated toolchain for tasks spanning the design process, including modeling, falsification, debugging, and ML component retraining. We evaluate all of these applications in an industrial case study on an experimental autonomous aircraft taxiing system developed by Boeing, which uses a neural network to track the centerline of a runway. We define runway scenarios using the Scenic probabilistic programming language, and use them to drive tests in the X-Plane flight simulator. We first perform falsification, automatically finding environment conditions causing the system to violate its specification by deviating significantly from the centerline (or even leaving the runway entirely). Next, we use counterexample analysis to identify distinct failure cases, and confirm their root causes with specialized testing. Finally, we use the results of falsification and debugging to retrain the network, eliminating several failure cases and improving the overall performance of the closed-loop system.Comment: Full version of a CAV 2020 pape