Lessons Learned from Model Checking a NASA Robot Controller

  • Authors:

  • Natasha Sharygina;James Browne;Fei Xie;Robert Kurshan;Vladimir Levin

  • Affiliations:

  • School of Computer Science and Software Engineering Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, 5000 Forbes Ave., Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA. nys@sei.cmu.edu;School of Computer Science, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin TX 78712, USA. browne@cs.cmu.edu;School of Computer Science, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin TX 78712, USA. feixie@cs.cmu.edu;Cadence Design Systems, Inc., 571 Central Avenue, New Providence, NJ 07974, USA. rkurshan@cadence.com;Microsoft Corporation, One Microsoft Way, Redmond, WA 98052, USA. vladlev@microsoft.com

  • Venue:
  • Formal Methods in System Design
  • Year:
  • 2004

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Abstract

This paper reports as a case study an attempt to model check the control subsystem of an operational NASA robotics system. Thirty seven properties including both safety and liveness specifications were formulated for the system. Twenty two of the thirty seven properties were successfully model checked. Several significant flaws in the original software system were identified and corrected during the model checking process. The case study presents the entire process in a semi-historical mode. The goal is to provide reusable knowledge of what worked, what did not work and why.