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Applying Automata Learning to Embedded Control Software

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Formal Methods and Software Engineering (ICFEM 2015)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNPSE,volume 9407))

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Abstract

Using an adaptation of state-of-the-art algorithms for black-box automata learning, as implemented in the LearnLib tool, we succeeded to learn a model of the Engine Status Manager (ESM), a software component that is used in printers and copiers of Océ. The main challenge that we encountered was that LearnLib, although effective in constructing hypothesis models, was unable to find counterexamples for some hypotheses. In fact, none of the existing FSM-based conformance testing methods that we tried worked for this case study. We therefore implemented an extension of the algorithm of Lee and Yannakakis for computing an adaptive distinguishing sequence. Even when an adaptive distinguishing sequence does not exist, Lee and Yannakakis’ algorithm produces an adaptive sequence that ‘almost’ identifies states. In combination with a standard algorithm for computing separating sequences for pairs of states, we managed to verify states with on average 3 test queries. Altogether, we needed around 60 million queries to learn a model of the ESM with 77 inputs and 3.410 states. We also constructed a model directly from the ESM software and established equivalence with the learned model. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first paper in which active automata learning has been applied to industrial control software.

This work was supported by STW project 11763 Integrating Testing And Learning of Interface Automata (ITALIA) and by the DFG/NWO Bilateral Research Programme ROCKS. An early version of this paper appeared as [35].

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Acknowledgments

We thank Lou Somers for suggesting the ESM case study and for his support of our research. Fides Aarts and Harco Kuppens helped us with the use of LearnLib and CADP, and Jan Tretmans gave useful feedback.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Océ Technologies B.V., Venlo, The Netherlands

    Wouter Smeenk

  2. Faculty of Science, Radboud University Nijmegen, P.O. Box 9010, 6500 GL, Nijmegen, The Netherlands

    Joshua Moerman, Frits Vaandrager & David N. Jansen

Authors
  1. Wouter Smeenk
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  2. Joshua Moerman
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  3. Frits Vaandrager
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  4. David N. Jansen
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Frits Vaandrager .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Electronics and Computer Science, University of Southampton, Southampton, United Kingdom

    Michael Butler

  2. Université Paris-Sud, Orsay, France

    Sylvain Conchon

  3. Université Paris-Sud, Orsay, France

    Fatiha Zaïdi

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Smeenk, W., Moerman, J., Vaandrager, F., Jansen, D.N. (2015). Applying Automata Learning to Embedded Control Software. In: Butler, M., Conchon, S., Zaïdi, F. (eds) Formal Methods and Software Engineering. ICFEM 2015. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 9407. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-25423-4_5

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