Development of a target recognition system using formal and semi-formal software modeling methods

摘要

With the shrinking defense budget, the U. S. Department of Defense (DoD) has relied more on commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) and contracted software systems. Government contractors and commercial developers currently rely heavily on semi-formal methods such as the Unified Modeling Language (UML) in developing the models and requirements for these software systems. The correctness of specifications in such languages cannot be tested, in general, until they are implemented. Due to the inherent safety requirements for mission critical systems, formal specification methods would be preferable. This thesis contrasts the development of a combat system for the Navy using the formal specification language SPEC with development using the semi-formal method UML. The application being developed is a ship recognition system that utilized image data, detected emitters, and ship positioning to correlate ship identification. The requirements analysis and architectural design for this system are presented.