TY - JOUR
T1 - Stress Testing Control Loops in Cyber-physical Systems
AU - Mandrioli, Claudio
AU - Shin, Seung Yeob
AU - Maggio, Martina
AU - Bianculli, Domenico
AU - Briand, Lionel
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2023 Copyright held by the owner/author(s).
PY - 2023/12/21
Y1 - 2023/12/21
N2 - Cyber-physical Systems (CPSs) are often safety-critical and deployed in uncertain environments. Identifying scenarios where CPSs do not comply with requirements is fundamental but difficult due to the multidisciplinary nature of CPSs. We investigate the testing of control-based CPSs, where control and software engineers develop the software collaboratively. Control engineers make design assumptions during system development to leverage control theory and obtain guarantees on CPS behaviour. In the implemented system, however, such assumptions are not always satisfied, and their falsification can lead the loss of guarantees. We define stress testing of control-based CPSs as generating tests to falsify such design assumptions. We highlight different types of assumptions, focusing on the use of linearised physics models. To generate stress tests falsifying such assumptions, we leverage control theory to qualitatively characterise the input space of a control-based CPS. We propose a novel test parametrisation for control-based CPSs and use it with the input space characterisation to develop a stress testing approach. We evaluate our approach on three case study systems, including a drone, a continuous-current motor (in five configurations), and an aircraft. Our results show the effectiveness of the proposed testing approach in falsifying the design assumptions and highlighting the causes of assumption violations.
AB - Cyber-physical Systems (CPSs) are often safety-critical and deployed in uncertain environments. Identifying scenarios where CPSs do not comply with requirements is fundamental but difficult due to the multidisciplinary nature of CPSs. We investigate the testing of control-based CPSs, where control and software engineers develop the software collaboratively. Control engineers make design assumptions during system development to leverage control theory and obtain guarantees on CPS behaviour. In the implemented system, however, such assumptions are not always satisfied, and their falsification can lead the loss of guarantees. We define stress testing of control-based CPSs as generating tests to falsify such design assumptions. We highlight different types of assumptions, focusing on the use of linearised physics models. To generate stress tests falsifying such assumptions, we leverage control theory to qualitatively characterise the input space of a control-based CPS. We propose a novel test parametrisation for control-based CPSs and use it with the input space characterisation to develop a stress testing approach. We evaluate our approach on three case study systems, including a drone, a continuous-current motor (in five configurations), and an aircraft. Our results show the effectiveness of the proposed testing approach in falsifying the design assumptions and highlighting the causes of assumption violations.
KW - control theory
KW - Cyber-physical systems
KW - software testing
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85183319274&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1145/3624742
DO - 10.1145/3624742
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85183319274
SN - 1049-331X
VL - 33
JO - ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology
JF - ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology
IS - 2
M1 - 35
ER -