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Stress Testing Control Loops in Cyber-physical Systems

Mandrioli, Claudio LU orcid ; Shin, Seung Yeob ; Maggio, Martina LU ; Bianculli, Domenico and Briand, Lionel (2023) In ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology 33(2).
Abstract

Cyber-physical Systems (CPSs) are often safety-critical and deployed in uncertain environments. Identifying scenarios where CPSs do not comply with requirements is fundamental but difficult due to the multidisciplinary nature of CPSs. We investigate the testing of control-based CPSs, where control and software engineers develop the software collaboratively. Control engineers make design assumptions during system development to leverage control theory and obtain guarantees on CPS behaviour. In the implemented system, however, such assumptions are not always satisfied, and their falsification can lead the loss of guarantees. We define stress testing of control-based CPSs as generating tests to falsify such design assumptions. We highlight... (More)

Cyber-physical Systems (CPSs) are often safety-critical and deployed in uncertain environments. Identifying scenarios where CPSs do not comply with requirements is fundamental but difficult due to the multidisciplinary nature of CPSs. We investigate the testing of control-based CPSs, where control and software engineers develop the software collaboratively. Control engineers make design assumptions during system development to leverage control theory and obtain guarantees on CPS behaviour. In the implemented system, however, such assumptions are not always satisfied, and their falsification can lead the loss of guarantees. We define stress testing of control-based CPSs as generating tests to falsify such design assumptions. We highlight different types of assumptions, focusing on the use of linearised physics models. To generate stress tests falsifying such assumptions, we leverage control theory to qualitatively characterise the input space of a control-based CPS. We propose a novel test parametrisation for control-based CPSs and use it with the input space characterisation to develop a stress testing approach. We evaluate our approach on three case study systems, including a drone, a continuous-current motor (in five configurations), and an aircraft. Our results show the effectiveness of the proposed testing approach in falsifying the design assumptions and highlighting the causes of assumption violations.

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Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
author
; ; ; and
organization
publishing date
type
Contribution to journal
publication status
published
subject
keywords
control theory, Cyber-physical systems, software testing
in
ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology
volume
33
issue
2
article number
35
publisher
Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
external identifiers
  • scopus:85183319274
ISSN
1049-331X
DOI
10.1145/3624742
project
Trustworthy Cyber-Physical Pipelines
language
English
LU publication?
yes
additional info
Publisher Copyright: © 2023 Copyright held by the owner/author(s).
id
c811083c-5f9c-408c-9909-b4ff331f00f8
date added to LUP
2024-04-18 18:30:37
date last changed
2024-04-30 11:39:47
@article{c811083c-5f9c-408c-9909-b4ff331f00f8,
  abstract     = {{<p>Cyber-physical Systems (CPSs) are often safety-critical and deployed in uncertain environments. Identifying scenarios where CPSs do not comply with requirements is fundamental but difficult due to the multidisciplinary nature of CPSs. We investigate the testing of control-based CPSs, where control and software engineers develop the software collaboratively. Control engineers make design assumptions during system development to leverage control theory and obtain guarantees on CPS behaviour. In the implemented system, however, such assumptions are not always satisfied, and their falsification can lead the loss of guarantees. We define stress testing of control-based CPSs as generating tests to falsify such design assumptions. We highlight different types of assumptions, focusing on the use of linearised physics models. To generate stress tests falsifying such assumptions, we leverage control theory to qualitatively characterise the input space of a control-based CPS. We propose a novel test parametrisation for control-based CPSs and use it with the input space characterisation to develop a stress testing approach. We evaluate our approach on three case study systems, including a drone, a continuous-current motor (in five configurations), and an aircraft. Our results show the effectiveness of the proposed testing approach in falsifying the design assumptions and highlighting the causes of assumption violations.</p>}},
  author       = {{Mandrioli, Claudio and Shin, Seung Yeob and Maggio, Martina and Bianculli, Domenico and Briand, Lionel}},
  issn         = {{1049-331X}},
  keywords     = {{control theory; Cyber-physical systems; software testing}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  month        = {{12}},
  number       = {{2}},
  publisher    = {{Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)}},
  series       = {{ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology}},
  title        = {{Stress Testing Control Loops in Cyber-physical Systems}},
  url          = {{http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/3624742}},
  doi          = {{10.1145/3624742}},
  volume       = {{33}},
  year         = {{2023}},
}