Communicating Embedded Systems: Software and Design

Preface ¹

This book stems from the global scientific priority put on the development of the research on communicating embedded systems. A worldwide scientific community is motivated by this theme and taking care of the development and promotion of formal approaches based on mathematical models and implemented by computer-automated tools. The main objective is to rise to the ever-growing challenge of mastering the quality of upcoming computer systems.

The computer systems concerned are:

– critical: a strong demand for quality comes from their handling of critical functions or a large-scale deployment;

– complex: their correct functioning depends on the careful use of resources that are mutually dependent over time. So their analysis on the basis of a formal model appears to be the most solid scientific approach.

This motivation is not new as the formal methods community has already produced a great number of results, mainly dedicated to the tasks of formal specification, verification and proof, and test synthesis. Several studies have been conducted with industrial partners, and a few of them have finally initiated some industrial software development processes. However, it remains mostly insufficient with respect to the increasing computer-related risks. Some progress is expected on the development and promotion of formal methods used in concrete computer-related problems and objects, as well as in the systematic research of new application fields and methods. Beyond the “traditional” ...