Extending a User Interface Prototyping Tool with Automatic MISRA C Code Generation
This work addresses the need for reliable code generation in safety-critical systems like medical devices, though it is incremental as it extends an existing tool.
The authors tackled the problem of generating safety-critical code for user interfaces by developing a MISRA C code generator for the PVSio-web prototyping toolkit, enabling automatic code production from formally verified models, with initial validation on a medical device data entry system.
We are concerned with systems, particularly safety-critical systems, that involve interaction between users and devices, such as the user interface of medical devices. We therefore developed a MISRA C code generator for formal models expressed in the PVSio-web prototyping toolkit. PVSio-web allows developers to rapidly generate realistic interactive prototypes for verifying usability and safety requirements in human-machine interfaces. The visual appearance of the prototypes is based on a picture of a physical device, and the behaviour of the prototype is defined by an executable formal model. Our approach transforms the PVSio-web prototyping tool into a model-based engineering toolkit that, starting from a formally verified user interface design model, will produce MISRA C code that can be compiled and linked into a final product. An initial validation of our tool is presented for the data entry system of an actual medical device.