Section: Application Domains

Formal Verification of Smart Flexible Manufacturing Systems

Modern production/assembly lines are based on generic multipurpose programmable tools that are quickly reassembled and reprogrammed to accomodate new production processes. In a similar manner, complex products are also reengineered by assembling existing elementary functions, together with their correponding software. This modular construction principle enables a fast redesign of products or assembly chains, at the expense of possibly introducing bugs or malfunctions. Verification is thus a crucial step to guarantee the correctness of these systems. In particular, timing aspects are essential in order to both check correctness of an assembling with respect to some specification, but also in order to design software sensors that help the online monitoring of a system. The main challenges here essentially lie in the selection of appropriate verification formalisms, in the derivation of models for the systems under study, and in the size of the systems to handle.