ORCID Identifier(s)

0000-0001-9019-6067

Graduation Semester and Year

2019

Language

English

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy in Computer Science

Department

Computer Science and Engineering

First Advisor

Christoph Csallner

Abstract

Rigorous validation of commercial cyber-physical system (CPS) tool chains (e.g., MATLAB/Simulink) through automated testing is of utmost importance since tool-chain generated artifacts are often deployed in safety-critical embedded hardware. Although automated differential testing through random program generation and equivalence modulo input (EMI)-based mutation has been well studied for procedural compiler testing, applying these techniques for Simulink, the widely used commercial CPS development tool pose unique challenges, which we explore in this series of work for the very first time. To better understand real-world CPS modeling and to automatically generate Simulink models similar to those crafted by engineers and researchers, we present the largest study of Simulink models to date. Using insights from this corpus we have built the very first publicly known random Simulink model generator and differential testing framework, which has found previously unknown compiler bugs in Simulink. To further improve the automated compiler testing framework we have then explored novel EMI-based mutation techniques for Simulink models, which deal with CPS language features that are not found in procedural programs, including an explicit notion of time and zombie code which combines the properties of both dead and live code. Our resulting open source tools have discovered 21 unique Simulink bugs in various production versions to date confirmed by MathWorks Support proving bug finding capabilities of these tools. 16 of these bugs were unknown to MathWorks Support.

Keywords

Cyber-physical systems, Randomized differential testing, Equivalent Modulo Input, Simulink, Compiler testing, Automated testing

Disciplines

Computer Sciences | Physical Sciences and Mathematics

Comments

Degree granted by The University of Texas at Arlington

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