A Runtime Verification System for Developing, Analyzing and Controlling Complex Safety-Critical Software

A comprehensive commercial-grade system for the development of safe parallel and serial programs is developed. The system has the ability to perform efficient parametric runtime verification of programs. This can be used to ensure the safety of mission critical systems at runtime. The system also has the ability to extrapolate all feasible program traces deriving from thread inter-leavings that meet the casual dependencies of a program from a single running. These feasible traces can be checked, using the same parametric trace slicing algorithm used for runtime verification, against safety properties. An extensive evaluation of the system on software critical to NASA is also performed, with the aid of Klaus Havelund.

The Non-NASA applications are much the same. Not all companies produce software that is as safety critical as NASA, but even those that do not will benefit from the ability to rigorously test formal safety policies in pre-production software, and guarantee safety in production software. Predictive runtime analysis only becomes more important as commercial software adapts to the massively multi-core future.

The software developed by NASA is particularly safety critical. Our tool will allow NASA not only to test the safety of pre-production software, but also to guarantee safety of portions of software systems at runtime. The addition of predictive runtime analysis will allow NASA to easily find safety violations in multi-threaded programs.

This is a mature technology (TRL 8) — the realistic path in is usually NASA's Technology Transfer Program: licensing an existing NASA patent, or a Space Act Agreement to use NASA facilities/expertise directly. NASA also runs a startup licensing program with no upfront fee for companies formed to commercialize a specific NASA technology.

None of these are guaranteed paths for this specific project — TechPort itself doesn't have an "apply" button. Reaching out to the contact(s) above with a specific question is usually the fastest way to find out what's actually open.