Deriving Specifications for Systems That Are Connected to the Physical World

Well understood methods exist for developing programs from formal specifications. Not only do such methods offer a precise check that certain sorts of deviations from their specifications are absent from implementations but they can also increase the productivity of the develrocess by careful use of layers of abstraction and refinement in design. These methods, however, presuppose a specification from which to begin the development. For tasks that are fully described in terms of the symbolic values within a machine, inventing a specification is not difficult but there is an increasing demand for systems in which programs interact with an external physical world. Here, the task of fixing the specification for the "silicon package" can be more challenging than the development itself. Such applications include control programs that attempt to bring about changes in the physical world via actuators and measure things in that external (to the silicon package) world via sensors. Fu...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2007
• Where: BIRTHDAY
• Authors: Cliff B. Jones, Ian J. Hayes, Michael A. Jackson
• Keywords: Applied Computing, BIRTHDAY 2007, Physical World, Silicon Package, Specification