Formal requirement and architecture specifications of a multi-agent robotic system
This work addresses the problem of building correct complex multi-agent robotic systems for engineers, but it is incremental as it builds on existing formal specification techniques.
The paper tackles the challenge of formally specifying and architecting multi-agent robotic systems by proposing an approach that uses step-wise refinement from abstract to concrete specifications and formal architecture definitions, exemplified through a case study.
One of the most challenging tasks in specification engineering for a multi-agent robotic system is to formally specify and architect the system, especially as a multi-agent robotic system is concurrent having concurrent processing, and often having dynamic environment. The formal requirement and architecture specifications along with step-wise refinement from abstract to concrete concepts play major role in formalizing the system. This paper proposes the formal requirement and architecture specifications aspects of an approach that supports analysis with respect to functional as well as non-functional properties by step-wise refinement from abstract to concrete specifications and formal architecture definition. These formal specifications have been exemplified by a case study. As formal specification techniques are getting more mature, our capability to build a correct complex multi-agent robotic system also grows quickly.