Abstract
This paper reports on the development and validation of a formal model for an automotive adaptive exterior lights system (ELS) with multiple variants in Alloy 6, which is the most recent version of the Alloy lightweight formal specification language that supports mutable relations and temporal logic. We explore different strategies to address variability, one in pure Alloy and another through an annotative language extension. We then show how Alloy and its Analyzer can be used to validate systems of this nature, namely by checking that the reference scenarios are admissible, and to automatically verify whether the established requirements hold. A prototype was developed to translate the provided validation sequences into Alloy and back to further automate the validation process. The resulting ELS model was validated against the provided validation sequences and verified for most of requirements for all variants.
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Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank Frank Houdek for helping clarifying the requirements.
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Open access funding provided by FCT|FCCN (b-on). This work is financed by National Funds through the Portuguese funding agency, FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, within project UIDB/50014/2020. The third author was financed by the ERDF – European Regional Development Fund through the Operational Programme for Competitiveness and Internationalisation – COMPETE 2020 Programme and by National Funds through the FCT, within project POCI-01-0145-FEDER-016826.
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Cunha, A., Macedo, N. & Liu, C. Validating multiple variants of an automotive light system with Alloy 6. Int J Softw Tools Technol Transfer 26, 365–377 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10009-024-00752-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10009-024-00752-3