ContTestCPS · Control Theory-based Testing of Cyber-Physical Systems

Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) are engineering artefacts characterised by the integration of software and physical components. CPS appear in various and critical aspects of human life, from drones to wind turbines. Hence, testing their safe and effective operation is of prime importance. However, due to the combination of physical and software components, CPS testing requires integrating different engineering disciplines. Notably, control engineering is used at the interface between the software and the physical component and provides mathematical guarantees on the CPS safety and performance. To overcome the interdisciplinary complexity of CPS development, this project sets out to integrate control engineering tools and guarantees into software testing practices. Through this integration, I will develop novel testing techniques that allow the engineers to implement safer and more effective CPS. First, I will introduce a novel testing technique based on the assumptions made by control engineers to complement the traditional use of CPS requirements. This technique will integrate the guarantees provided by control engineering into the testing process. Thus, this interdisciplinary testing will more effectively target critical CPS execution scenarios. Second, I will introduce the use of the frequency domain for the test case generation and output evaluation. Traditional CPS testing methods use the time domain to define input sequences and describe desired CPS properties as it is closer to the natural language. However, the time domain has limitations in terms of expressiveness of the relevant properties and in the computational complexity. Instead, the frequency domain is widely used in control engineering as it suits the analysis of the differential equations that describe the physical component. I will overcome the time-domain limitations for test case generation and evaluation by complementing its use with the frequency domain.