I came, I saw, I certified: some perspectives on the safety assurance of cyber-physical systems

TL;DR

This paper discusses the importance of safety assurance in cyber-physical systems, highlighting challenges and potential directions for improving assurance cases to ensure safety, security, and reliability for critical applications.

Contribution

It explores challenges in developing assurance cases for cyber-physical systems and outlines potential directions for improving their structure, notation, and automation.

Findings

Identifies key challenges in assurance case development

Suggests pattern-based improvements for assurance structures

Highlights the need for automation in assurance case generation

Abstract

The execution failure of cyber-physical systems (e.g., autonomous driving systems, unmanned aerial systems, and robotic systems) could result in the loss of life, severe injuries, large-scale environmental damage, property destruction, and major economic loss. Hence, such systems usually require a strong justification that they will effectively support critical requirements (e.g., safety, security, and reliability) for which they were designed. Thus, it is often mandatory to develop compelling assurance cases to support that justification and allow regulatory bodies to certify such systems. In such contexts, detecting assurance deficits, relying on patterns to improve the structure of assurance cases, improving existing assurance case notations, and (semi-)automating the generation of assurance cases are key to develop compelling assurance cases and foster consumer acceptance. We therefore explore challenges related to such assurance enablers and outline some potential directions that could be explored to tackle them.