Experience Report: Towards Moving Things with Types -- Helping Logistics Domain Experts to Control Cyber-Physical Systems with Type-Based Synthesis

TL;DR

This paper reports on integrating a type-based synthesis tool with a logistics environment to help domain experts control cyber-physical systems like robots and drones, aiming to improve formal methods application in logistics.

Contribution

It demonstrates the integration of (CL)S, a type-based synthesis algorithm, with an IDE in a logistics CPS environment, facilitating control for non-expert users.

Findings

Successful integration of (CL)S with logistics CPS environment

Visualization of system movements using laser support

Identification of challenges and future directions in domain-specific formal methods

Abstract

One of the ultimate goals of software engineering is to leave virtual spaces and move real things. We take one step toward supporting users with this goal by connecting a type-based synthesis algorithm, (CL)S, and its IDE to a logistics lab environment. The environment is built and used by domain experts, who have little or no training in formal methods, and need to cope with large spaces of software, hardware and problem specific solution variability. It consists of a number of Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS), including wheel-driven robots as well as flying drones, and it has laser-based support to visualize their possible movements. Our work describes results on an experiment integrating the latter with (CL)S. Possibilities and challenges of working in the domain of logistics and in cooperation with its experts are outlined. Future research plans are presented and an invitation is made to join the effort of building better, formally understood, development tools for CPS-enabled industrial environments.