Towards a Unified Methodology for the Design and Development of DistributedControl System Software

摘要

A unified approach to the design and development of distributed control softwareis presented. This method is a result of a 'tight' integration between a formal method for concurrent systems (CSP) and a structured method for distributed control system (DARTS). The various exisiting formal specification and verification techniques and their related applications to step development are reviewed. The conventional structured techniques that are widely used by the engineering community are reported. The salient properties of a typical control system are identified and the specification partial verification and full documentation of the formal building blocks for the full specification of such systems, are presented. The majority of the software development at a high level of a direct drive robot system is described. Implementation of formally specified systems such as the Zeroth and First level models of the robot control system developed are addressed. In particular, the design and development of a proof assistant is discussed: the Causality Diagram Evaluation Tool (CDET), which is used for prototyping CSP processes. The results are summarized and conclusions on the advantages and limitations concerning the unification of the two methods is evaluated. Through this, the applicability of formal methods to control software development is evaluated. Comments on possible future research directions are made.