Authors:
Assaf Marron
and
David Harel
Affiliation:
Department of Computer Science and Applied Mathematics, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, 76100, Israel
Keyword(s):
System Engineering, Software Engineering, LLM, Models, Specifications, Interaction, Simulation, Verification, Autonomous Systems, Systems of Systems, Super-Reactive Systems.
Abstract:
Finding hidden faults in reactive systems early in planning and development is critical for human safety, the environment, society and the economy. However, the ever growing complexity of reactive systems and their interactions, combined with the absence of adequate technical details in early development stages, pose a great obstacle. The problem is exacerbated by the constant evolution of systems, and by their extensive and growing interwoven-ness with other systems and the physical world. Appropriately, such systems may be termed super-reactive. We propose an architecture for models and tools that help overcome such barriers and enable simulation, systematic analysis, and fault detection and handling, early in the development of super-reactive systems. The main innovations are: (i) the allowing of natural language (NL) specifications in elements of otherwise standard models and specification formalisms, while deferring the interpretation of such NL elements to simulation and valida
tion time; and (ii) a focus on early formalization of tacit interdependencies among seemingly orthogonal requirements. The approach is facilitated by combining newly specialized tools with standard development and verification facilities, and with the inference and abstraction capabilities of large language models (LLMs) and associated AI techniques. An important ingredient in the approach is the domain knowledge embedded in LLMs. Special methodological measures are proposed to mitigate well known limitations of LLMs.
(More)