Continuous verification with acknowledged MAPE-K pattern and time logic-based slicing: A platooning system of systems case study

Abstract

A system of Systems (SoS) has emerged to achieve goals beyond the capabilities of a single system. Platooning is a representative SoS where vehicles are driven in a group for energy efficiency. A leader of a platoon can control followers, but the followers can also leave the platoon independently. During follower leave, energy efficiency and the independent operation of followers may conflict. To resolve the conflicts of the platooning SoS and operate safe platooning maneuvers, continuous verification of platooning is required. Continuous verification is performed repeatedly in a control loop that allows system monitoring and verification. However, there are two problems in the existing approaches: there are no suitable control loop patterns to support the resilient reconfiguration, and the SoS verification cost is high. We propose an approach, called continuous verification of platooning (CVP), that solves these two problems. CVP includes an acknowledged MAPE-K pattern for resilience and a fast and accurate slicing for low verification costs. The acknowledged MAPE-K pattern and slicing algorithm proposed in the paper can be independently used for other systems and models. In the case of the acknowledged MAPE-K pattern, we applied it to a mass casualty incident response SoS, which is another acknowledged type of SoS in the paper, and showed its effectiveness. Our experiments on CVP showed that the pattern reduced the incidence rate of 10 types of failure by 97.3%, and ensured the leave of followers. We also proved the correctness of slicing and demonstrated experimentally that it reduces the verification costs by 68.62. Editor's note: Open Science material was validated by the Journal of Systems and Software Open Science Board.