Adaptive Homing is in P

Homing preset and adaptive experiments with Finite State Machines (FSMs) are widely used when a non-initialized discrete event system is given for testing and thus, has to be set to the known state at the first step. The length of a shortest homing sequence is known to be exponential with respect to the number of states for a complete observable nondeterministic FSM while the problem of checking the existence of such sequence (Homing problem) is PSPACE-complete. In order to decrease the complexity of related problems, one can consider adaptive experiments when a next input to be applied to a system under experiment depends on the output responses to the previous inputs. In this paper, we study the problem of the existence of an adaptive homing experiment for complete observable nondeterministic machines. We show that if such experiment exists then it can be constructed with the use of a polynomial-time algorithm with respect to the number of FSM states.Comment: In Proceedings MBT 2015, arXiv:1504.0192

Automated unique input output sequence generation for conformance testing of FSMs

This paper describes a method for automatically generating unique input output (UIO) sequences for FSM conformance testing. UIOs are used in conformance testing to verify the end state of a transition sequence. UIO sequence generation is represented as a search problem and genetic algorithms are used to search this space. Empirical evidence indicates that the proposed method yields considerably better (up to 62% better) results compared with random UIO sequence generation

Синтез установочных последовательностей для автоматов с временными ограничениями

State identification is the well-known problem in the theory of Finite State Machines (FSM) where homing sequences (HS) are used for the identification of a current FSM state, and this fact is widely used in the area of software and hardware testing and verification. For various kinds of FSMs, such as partial, complete, deterministic, non-deterministic, there exist sufficient and necessary conditions for the existence ofpreset and adaptive HS and algorithms for their derivation. Nowadays timed aspects become very important for hardware and software systems and for this reason classical FSMs are extended by clock variables. In this work, we address the problem of checking the existence and derivation of homing sequences for FSMs with timed guards and show that the length estimation for timed homing sequence coincides with that for untimed FSM. The investigation is based on the FSM abstraction of a Timed FSM, i.e. on a classical FSM which describes behavior of corresponding TFSM and inherits some of its properties. When solving state identification problems for timed FSMs, the existing FSM abstraction is properly optimized.Идентификация состояний является хорошо известной задачей теории конечных автоматов, и установочные последовательности, которые позволяют идентифицировать текущее состояние конечного автомата, широко используются в областях тестирования и верификации программного и аппаратного обеспечения. Для автоматов различных классов, полностью определенных и частичных, детерминированных и недетерминированных, установлены необходимые и достаточные условия существования безусловных и адаптивных установочных последовательностей и предложены алгоритмы их синтеза, если такая последовательность существует. В настоящее время при верификации и тестировании программного и аппаратного обеспечения необходимо учитывать временные аспекты, что приводит к расширению автоматных моделей временными переменными. В настоящей работе мы исследуем задачи проверки существования и синтеза безусловных и адаптивных установочных последовательностей для автоматов с временными ограничениями и показываем, что оценки на длину таких последовательностей совпадают с оценками для классических конечных автоматов. Предлагаемый подход основан на использовании конечно-автоматной абстракции временного автомата, то есть описании временного автомата соответствующим конечным автоматом, который сохраняет свойства временного автомата относительно установочных последовательностей

Using synchronizing heuristics to construct homing sequences

Computing a shortest synchronizing sequence of an automaton is an NP-Hard problem. There are well-known heuristics to find short synchronizing sequences. Finding a shortest homing sequence is also an NP-Hard problem. Unlike existing heuristics to find synchronizing sequences, homing heuristics are not widely studied. In this paper, we discover a relation between synchronizing and homing sequences by creating an automaton called homing automaton. By applying synchronizing heuristics on this automaton we get short homing sequences. Furthermore, we adapt some of the synchronizing heuristics to construct homing sequences

Synchronizing Deterministic Push-Down Automata Can Be Really Hard

The question if a deterministic finite automaton admits a software reset in the form of a so-called synchronizing word can be answered in polynomial time. In this paper, we extend this algorithmic question to deterministic automata beyond finite automata. We prove that the question of synchronizability becomes undecidable even when looking at deterministic one-counter automata. This is also true for another classical mild extension of regularity, namely that of deterministic one-turn push-down automata. However, when we combine both restrictions, we arrive at scenarios with a PSPACE-complete (and hence decidable) synchronizability problem. Likewise, we arrive at a decidable synchronizability problem for (partially) blind deterministic counter automata. There are several interpretations of what synchronizability should mean for deterministic push-down automata. This is depending on the role of the stack: should it be empty on synchronization, should it be always the same or is it arbitrary? For the automata classes studied in this paper, the complexity or decidability status of the synchronizability problem is mostly independent of this technicality, but we also discuss one class of automata where this makes a difference