Contract-Based Specification Refinement and Repair for Mission Planning

TL;DR

This paper presents a systematic approach for modeling, refining, and repairing formal mission specifications for robots using assume-guarantee contracts, enabling better approximation and repair of specifications with a library of components.

Contribution

It introduces a novel methodology for specification refinement and repair using contract operations, improving the modeling and correction process for robotic mission planning.

Findings

Proposes a systematic method for specification repair and refinement.

Uses contract operations like quotient, separation, composition, merging.

Enables approximation of specifications with existing library components.

Abstract

We address the problem of modeling, refining, and repairing formal specifications for robotic missions using assume-guarantee contracts. We show how to model mission specifications at various levels of abstraction and implement them using a library of pre-implemented specifications. Suppose the specification cannot be met using components from the library. In that case, we compute a proxy for the best approximation to the specification that can be generated using elements from the library. Afterward, we propose a systematic way to either 1) search for and refine the `missing part' of the specification that the library cannot meet or 2) repair the current specification such that the existing library can refine it. Our methodology for searching and repairing mission requirements leverages the quotient, separation, composition, and merging operations between contracts.