Authors:
Vladimir Estivill-Castro
1
;
Miguel Carrillo
2
and
David Rosenblueth
2
Affiliations:
1
Department of Engineering, Pompeu Fabra University, Roc Boronat 138, Barcelona 08018, Spain
;
2
Instituto de Investigaciones en Matemáaticas Aplicadas y en Sistemas, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Apdo. 20-126, Ciudad de M˙exico 01000, Mexico
Keyword(s):
Models of Behaviour, Finite-State Machines, Distributed Systems, Formal Verification.
Abstract:
As automation grows, so does the complexity of software systems. Hence, the urgent and pressing need for software verification, particularly for distributed systems, as they are notoriously difficult to verify. The widespread of verification techniques, such as model checking, however, have been hindered by requiring a significant level of expertise. In the realm of industrial automation, on the other hand, the IEC 61499 function block architecture has gained prominence for modelling intricate distributed automation systems, especially in demanding scenarios such as process control. However, it suffers from being event-driven, forcing semantic interpretations and the use of timed events by a central clock, to produce input for model checkers. We argue that this situation can be remedied by logic-labelled finite-state machines and control-status messages. This is the first time that these concepts have been used for producing executable and verifiable models of distributed systems for
industrial automation with communication delays as is the current environment of application of the IEC 61499.
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