Electronic Communications of the EASST (European Association of Software Science and Technology)
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(A) Vision for 2050 - Context-Based Image Understanding for a Human-Robot Soccer Match
Get PDFWe believe it is possible to create the visual subsystem needed for the RoboCup 2050 challenge - a soccer match between humans and robots - within the next decade. In this position paper, we argue, that the basic techniques are available, but the main challenge will be to achieve the necessary robustness. We propose to address this challenge through the use of probabilistically modeled context, so for instance a visually indistinct circle is accepted as the ball, if it fits well with the ball's motion model and vice versa.Our vision is accompanied by a sequence of (partially already conducted) experiments for its verification. In these experiments, a human soccer player carries a helmet with a camera and an inertial sensor and the vision system has to extract all information from that data, a humanoid robot would need to take the human's place
Revealing Missing Bug-Fixes in Code Clones in Large-Scale Code Bases
Get PDFWhen a bug is fixed in duplicated code, it is often necessary to modify all duplicates (so-called clones) accordingly.In practice, however, fixes are often incomplete, which causes the bug to remain in one or more of the clones.This paper presents an approach that detects such incomplete bug-fixes in cloned code by analyzing a system's version history to reveal those commits that fix problems.The approach then performs incremental clone detection to reveal those clones that became inconsistent as a result of such a fix.We present results from a case study that analyzed incomplete bug-fixes in six industrial and open-source systems to demonstrate the feasibility and defectiveness of our approach.We identified likely incomplete bug-fixes in all analyzed systems
A Drill-Down Approach for Measuring Maintainability at Source Code Element Level
Get PDFMeasuring source code maintainability has always been a challenge for software engineers. To address this problem, a number of metrics-based quality models have been proposed by researchers. Besides expressing source code maintainability in terms of numerical values, these models are also expected to provide explicable results, i.e. to give a detailed list of source code fragments that should be improved in order to reach higher overall quality.In this paper, we propose a general method for drilling down to the root causes of a quality rating. According to our approach, a relative maintainability index can be calculated for each source code element for which metrics are calculated (e.g. methods, classes). The index value expresses the source code element's contribution to the overall quality rating.We empirically validated the method on the jEdit open source tool, by comparing the results with the opinions of software engineering students. The case study shows that there is a high, 0.68 Spearman's correlation, which suggests that relative maintainability indices assigned by our method express the subjective feelings of humans fairly well
Spreadsheets with a Semantic Layer
Get PDFSpreadsheets are active documents that are heavily employed in administration, financial forecasting, education, and science because of their intuitive, flexible, and direct approach to computation. But they are also error-prone, poorly documented, often contain actual data in legacy form. Therefore, assistance for high-impact spreadsheet users is needed. To determine what kind of help could be useful, we analyze user expectations with an “Wizard-of-Oz” experiment. This shows that background knowledge is missing in spreadsheets. In the SACHS project we approach the missing background knowledge by adding a semantic layer. We illustrate spreadsheets with a semi-formal domain ontology and equip them with a semantically transparent interface that allows new forms of interaction like “semantic navigation”, “framing”, or “playing with variants”, on which a survey is given. Moreover, an integration of assessment knowledge into the SACHS approach is presented. We model it based on theory graphs and sketch a potential SACHS extension with innovative assessment interaction
A Pattern-based Approach for Initial Diagram Layout
Get PDFIn a diagram editor, one can distinguish initial from incremental diagram layout. The former computes a diagram layout from scratch, whereas the latter adjusts an existing layout after diagram modifications.In previous work, we have proposed a pattern-based approach as a solution for incremental diagram layout in visual language editors. Each LP encapsulates certain layout behavior. A diagram's layout is then defined by simultaneously applying several LPs to the diagram. This solution has been designed for an interactive environment where the user may select and alter the layout behavior at runtime. This paper describes an extension of this approach that now supports initial diagram layout, too. While the old version only enabled freehand editing, the extended version now supports diagram import and structured editing as well
Enhanced Formal Verification Flow for Circuits Integrating Debugging and Coverage Analysis
Get PDFIn this paper we briefly review techniques used in formal hardware verification. An advanced flow emerges from integrating two major methodological improvements: debugging support and coverage analysis. The verification engineer can locate the source of a failure with an automatic debugging support. Components are identified which explain the discrepancy between the property and the circuit behavior.This method is complemented by an approach to analyze functional coverage of the proven Bounded Model Checking(BMC) properties. The approach automatically determines whether the property set is complete or not. In the latter case coverage gaps are returned. Both techniques are integrated in an enhanced verification flow. A running example demonstrates the resulting advantages
On Software Quality-motivated Design of a Real-time Framework for Complex Robot Control Systems
Get PDFFrameworks have fundamental impact on software quality of robot control systems. We propose systematic framework design aiming at high levels of support for all quality attributes that are relevant in the robotics domain. Design decisions are taken accordingly. We argue that certain areas of design are especially critical, as changing decisions there would likely require rewriting significant parts of the implementation. For these areas, quality-motivated solutions and benefits for actual applications are discussed. We illustrate and evaluate their implementations in our framework Finroc - after briefly introducing it. This includes a highly modular framework core and a well-performing, lock-free, zero-copying communication mechanism. Finroc is being used in complex and also in commercial robotic projects - which evinces that the approaches are suitable for real-world applications
Modelling and verifying IEEE Std 11073-20601 session setup using mCRL2
Get PDFIn this paper we advocate that formal verification should bea part of the development of a communication standard;in a short period of time issues areuncovered that have been in the standard for a number of years, and allsubtleties in the correctness of the protocol are understood.We model and verify the session setup protocolthat is part of the IEEE 11073-20601:2008 standard for communication betweenpersonal health devices.We identify a number of issues present in the standards document.Discussion with a member of the standards committee unveiled that most, but notall, of the identified issues are fixed in the IEEE 11073-20601:2010 version ofthe standard.In addition, the correctness of the protocol, including the fixes, is assessed.For this, properties of the session setup protocol are formulated, and usingthe model checker mCRL2 it is verified whether the model satisfies theseproperties.We show that the session setup protocol is flawed, and propose a straightforwardway to fix this issue
Concatenation and other Closure Properties of Recognizable Languages in Adhesive Categories
Get PDFWe consider recognizable languages of cospans in adhesive categories, ofwhich recognizable graph languages are a special case. We show that such languages are closed under concatenation, i.e. under cospan composition, by providing a con-crete construction that creates a concatenation automaton from two given automata.The construction is considerably more complex than the corresponding construction for finite automata. We conclude by showing negative closure properties for Kleene star and substitution